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Chalke Hist Fest - TuesdayThis is Solstice-Land in June after all and so waking up at 5am because of the light is to be expected. A couple of hours dozing as the lightest of rain tapped at the canvas above and I emerge for a remarkably warm shower. Having gone to sleep shortly after 11 to ...
Chalke Hist Fest 3 - WednesdayI woke up to the sight of an earwig flaunting its acrobatic manoeuvres inside the seam of the canvas above. Not quite panic as I flicked it out the tent door, but it got me moving. An earlier start was necessary because this was the first day of festival ...
Chalke Hist Fest 4 - ThursdayIt’s all become routine now – more or less six years without having camped and I’ve surprised myself by enjoying it! The warm showers and the Kiwi coffee van twenty metres away lures me out in the morning, a couple of protein ‘crisps’ and a Nakd bar providing ...
Reinforcements arrive at the Chalke Hist Fest 5 - Friday
It had been a relatively late one as the campsite dragged itself up and back to it. The antics seemed to be crescendoing into the weekend. Having spent a pleasant evening in the company of Aspects of History’s Editor-at-large Justin ...
Winding Down at the Chalke Hist Fest - Saturday & Sunday
This was the day that sapped me, the closeness of the heat unendurable and getting oneself up for another talk tricky as the crowds swarmed to Broad Chalke in their droves. The cool mornings, however, have been productive, typing ...
The Three Magi (and the word itself!) are, in some traditions, believed to take their origin from which monotheistic religion, centred in Iran?Aeschylus’ Persians focuses on the disastrous naval defeat in 480 BC of which invading king?How exactly was Julius Caesar related to ...
It is telling just how few mainstream films have tackled ancient Rome in the 21st century, with two notable exceptions… you know the ones I mean. Gladiators and the arches of the Colosseum are two of the most iconic images we have of the Romans and the Eternal City’s skyline, while combat in ...
And it feels oh-so-familiar, cosy even. Editor-at-large, Justin Doherty, and I began proceedings with the hour-long drive down from Somerset, a nervous sort of excitement as we discussed the line-up and prognosticated about just how searing it could get this week.Passes collected, tent up, ...
A night in a bed, if not a cure to stem the swells of insomnia, helped. Tuesday had been sapping and the idea of escaping the site, shade at a premium under the midsummer sun, attractive when a schoolmate invited me to stay in the neighbouring village.My father and his friend were arriving ...
The passing of time has a strange way in these parts. As the carnyces sound around site, WW2 jeeps swing by, Celts mingle with civil war militia, Neolithic outfits juxtaposed with band members of the much-loved ABBA tribute, you’d be forgiven for a certain amount of confusion. The heat this ...
Interviews
Welcome Alice, and congratulations on a third book in as many years. This latest release puts a spotlight on the life of Eleanor of Castile, Queen of England and wife of Edward I. Unlike your previous books, Uproar and Eighteen, you have built up the story of her life around your walking of the
John – your book, General Hastings 'Pug' Ismay: Soldier, Statesman, Diplomat was published nearly two years ago. Can you give us an outline of the life of ‘Pug’ Ismay, a man you describe as ‘an unusual subject for a biography’? Who was he, and provide us with some context of why he ought to be ...
Hi James – your book, The Big Little War, was published just over three years ago. It seems apt that this month marks the 85th anniversary of the coup which led to the extraordinary events that you recount in the book, and you have a new, extended edition of the book out. Remind us of the ...
Welcome back, Giles – we’re exactly two years on from the release of The Stalin Affair, and that question of the nature of diplomacy between allies seems ever more relevant in recent weeks and months in 2026. The ‘impossible alliance’ you discuss between Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill
Hello Steven – thanks for talking to us a few years on from the publication of The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I, our Book Club pick for June. In the book, you set out to strip away the myths around the first Stuart King of England – what was the biggest misconception you ...
Great to have you in the interviewee’s chair for once, Phil. So 1945: The Reckoning has, a few months ago, celebrated its 1st birthday. It was the culmination of a kind of trilogy on Britain and the Second World War. What drew you to the final year of the war, and why did it require a book of ...
Picture the straits as plumes of smoke rise above the abandoned Acropolis of Athens just a handful of miles away. The Persian armada lies in wait and the King of Kings, Xerxes, watches from the shore. An unlikely Greek alliance wavers on the brink of certain defeat, debating whether to flee and
That word, mission, might make you think of Robert De Niro or Jeremy Irons, perhaps a young Liam Neeson, in Jesuit robes clambering up the Iguazu Falls in deepest South America, but, forgotten and less-documented as their efforts may be, there was a Protestant expansion too, a clear, ...
It is little over a year since Donald Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden and announced a raise in tariffs on foreign imports into the US for nearly every country in the world. ‘Liberation Day’ as he branded 2nd April 2025, and the fall-out from it, was the provocation that historian ...
Great to have you back in the Book Club hotseat, Barney. A year on from the publication of Nations in Arms, what first drew you to the idea of comparing these five armies, separated by such vast swathes of time, and what did you hope a comparative study would reveal that individual military ...
Hello Brian, and welcome back to Aspects of History. A year on from its publication, Marshal Ney: Fall from Glory is your first book, but your fascination with the Napoleonic Wars goes back to childhood. What was it about Ney in particular that made you want to tell his story?I was very ...
Welcome to Aspects of History, Tim. The United States and China are the two dominant superpowers of the 21st century. How did we arrive at this point, and what has driven this rivalry you recount in War or Peace?: The United States and China, 2026–2049? For the vast chunk of human history, ...
Podcasts
Book Reviews
Blood And Thunder: Rugby and Irish Life: A History, by Liam O’Callaghan
You might be forgiven for thinking that life has always been this rosy for the Ireland’s men’s team. Sure, that pesky record of never winning a knock-out tie at the Rugby World Cup remains, but the feat of most Six Nations
Echoing Greens: How Cricket Shaped the English Imagination, by Brendan Cooper
It is now a cliché - perhaps always has been - to refer to cricket as a rich quarry for artistic achievement, even as mainstream coverage becomes less fixated on the written word and more concerned with the most ...
Is it fair to say that rivers are having a bit of a moment? Robert McFarlane’s invited readers to ponder their vital parts earlier this year with Is A River Alive?, while Fergal Sharkey cannot get a day off from leading the public campaign to clean up the UK’s rivers. Thousands tuned in to ...
I remember being taken on the Northern line as a child who loved talking kings and queens and reciting their dates and associated trivia ad nauseam (still my peak!). The murals that bring to life the platforms at Charing Cross were pointed out to me, the simple explanation being that Edward I ...
The Romans too often get the good gigs, both on our screens and on the shelves, these days; the Greeks, not so much… That is the starting point of Adrian Goldsworthy’s journey east across the Mediterranean and his sweeping account of the two headline acts at the tip of the Balkan peninsula. ...
In a secular age, religious history can feel slightly tangential and recondite, particularly when set against the commercial and colonial designs of fledgling empires in the early modern age. Very well, except that is missing the point. Reformation Europe remains a field that is rife with ...
There is a lot that has been said, written and mulled over when it comes to Roman Britain, and, consequently, a reader glimpsing Ferdinand Addis’ Conquest on the shelves might be forgiven for thinking it another interpretation of those well-trodden stories and a landmass that has been dug up ...
If one was to conceive of Themistocles’ story as an altarpiece (and it seems the eponymous subject did so!), the central image would be a well-known one: the Athenian slipping surreptitiously out of the Greek naval command’s evening deliberations to send his manservant to invite the Persians ...
Much is made to make history relatable to audiences, readers and listenerships in the 2020s, whether that is parallels with bygone eras, the immutable notion that we can plot what will come from what once happened. Barnaby Phillips’ The African Kingdom of Gold can lay claim to being a history ...