The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Books of 2023 from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of The Dardanelles ConspiracyIt’s been a great year for fiction and non-fiction, but these books are my first amongst equals. Every Spy a Traitor by Alex Gerlis follows Agent Archie, a Russian mole in MI6 across...
Justin, A Leap in the Dark is a historical novel set in the criminal underworld of Edinburgh. Why did you want to write it? I grew up in Scotland and spent part of my youth in Edinburgh, which had and still has a strong hold on my imagination. A Leap In the Dark is...
Between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Enlightenment, Europe lived through an era known as the Age of Reason. This was a period which saw widespread advances in the arts and sciences. Artists such as Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Van Dyk flourished across...
In 1732 Thomas Fairfax, the sixth Lord Fairfax of Cameron, was reading the Gentleman’s Magazine obituary of the agent to his lands in Virginia, Robert Carter. To his astonishment he discovered Carter was worth, in those days, £10,000 and so Fairfax immediately began...
Hugh, the Fairfax name is most well-known because of the 3rd Lord, Sir Thomas (1612 – 1671), but what are the origins of the family? The Fairfax family is first heard of in the 12th Century with Henry owning land at Askham near York. Like many people in the north of...
Nelson’s Pathfinders is essential reading for Naval Historians. It is prescient that it is being published a year after the Admiralty announced it will be withdrawing paper charts and notices to mariners from 2026. For anyone unfamiliar with an Admiralty Chart it is a...
Michael Barritt, what first attracted you to naval history? My tutor at Oxford was Piers Mackesy, who was working on seminal books on the period 1793-1815, and this focussed my own interest. My subsequent career as a hydrographic specialist in the Royal Navy broadened...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on Amazon Articles Click on the links below to read the full article [dpdfg_filtergrid custom_query="advanced" use_taxonomy_terms="on" multiple_taxonomies="name_of_author"...
Napoleon's Birthday Napoleon was born on 15 August, 1769. Under the Gregorian calendar this date was a holiday celebrating the Ascension of the Virgin Mary. The French Revolutionaries introduced a new calendar on 5 October, 1793, backdated to 22 September, 1792, the...
I was not completely sure, when asked to review this book, whether 300 pages or so on Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen would be my sort of thing. I am interested in Georgian and Regency History but that interest tends more towards the political and the...
