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Almost a quarter of a century on from the publication of Antony Beevor’s groundbreaking and prize-winning Stalingrad, military history is still big business with books by Max Hastings, James Holland and my own SBS: Silent Warriors gracing the UK bestseller charts this year. There is, it seems, ...
First in, Last OutOn August 12, 1942, five days after the 19,000-strong 1st Marine Division had landed unopposed on Guadalcanal in the British Solomon Islands, the first American ground offensive of the war, Sergeant Jim McEnery came upon the aftermath of a slaughter of US Marines who had ...
‘There has been,’ wrote a recent biographer of the Duke, ‘no more successful English soldier than the 1st Duke of Marlborough. During the War of the Spanish Succession, he won all his battles, and triumphed at every siege. Moreover, Marlborough was simultaneously in charge of overall allied ...
But for George MacDonald Fraser and his wonderfully funny – and, to modern eyes, decidedly un-PC – Harry Flashman novels, I would not have become a historian. I read them in my teens and was immediately captivated by MacDonald Fraser’s colourful depiction of Victorian warfare. The books became ...
Book Reviews
Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop the bomb on Japan is inevitably controversial. The events of 6th August 1945, as ‘Little Boy’ was unleashed on Hiroshima, are brilliantly and tragically described by Saul David in Crucible of Hell. It is unpleasant to read of the civilians who experienced the ...
The Homicidal Earl: The Life of Lord CardiganOf all the cock-ups that provide shade from the bright light of Britain’s military successes, the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava, fought in the Crimea on 25th October 1854, is one of the most enduring. In terms of the ...
There are two stories that Jeremy Paxman tells in his new book, Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain. The first is the national story, how coal was the driver behind the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire. The country’s hunger for this black rock was needed for steam to ...
Author Interviews
What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in?I remember, as a child, hearing tales of military derring-do round the dinner table. My Dad loves reading military history, and often discusses the great battles and commanders with friends and family. I suppose I first got interested as a means of getting his ...
I was delighted to be asked to interview Professor Tombs, a distinguished historian of France and the bestselling author of The English and Their History, about his new book, This Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe, on the historical context of Brexit because his uncertainty about which way
In the late summer of 1942, the Royal Navy embarked on an operation to relieve the island of Malta in the Mediterranean. With Axis forces surrounding Malta, the islanders were close to starvation until relief came in the form of Operation Pedestal. But it was an operation that had a huge cost, and has been regarded as a defeat by some historians. Max Hastings has written a new book ...