The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Reflections on Voltaire Voltaire was right three hundred years ago when he wrote, "The world would be a better place if those in power spent more time in their gardens." The world still isn’t taking his advice and wars and slaughter continue to dominate headlines, so...
James Davey, we’re very used to seeing the Royal Navy as all powerful post-Trafalgar and 1805, but was this the case during the period in which you write about, the 1790s? In short, no! The Navy of the 1790s was wracked by a series of crises and it certainly did not...
I knew very little about the story of William Dodd before reading Anthony Lynch’s new novel, The Hanging of William Dodd, but I was intrigued from the opening pages. The historical William Dodd was a renowned preacher who was eventually hanged at Tyburn for forgery in...
What first drew you to the story of William Dodd? I was researching Africans in eighteenth century portraits for an article I was about to write. A portrait by Gainsborough and a footnote* in the letters (number LVIII) of Ignatius Sancho stated: *Mr Sancho also wrote...
The eighteenth century - its art and its manners, have always absorbed me. Some years ago when I was researching British artists’ portraits of black men and women and children for an article in a learned journal, I needed to go no further it so happened than to look...
The New Land, the first novel in The Overstreet Saga, is set during the 1750s on the Maine coast, USA. What excited you to write about this period of upheaval in history? It was a time of great challenges and great potential. For German settlers like the Overstreets,...
Thomas Harding White Debt focuses on the vital case of the Demerara Uprising in 1823, Guyana, which has been largely underrepresented in historiography. Told from the viewpoint of four very different, but essential protagonists in the Demerara Uprising, Harding’s...
David O. Stewart revisits Washington’s political career with two objectives. Half his book examines his subject’s personal and political development before 1775 to show how Washington developed impressive political skills and a clear political agenda. Although most of...
As we all celebrate Aspects of History Day – I thought I’d reflect on where AoH is after two years. The whole project: magazine, website and podcast has been hugely rewarding. After all, for the four years previously I’d worked in an obscure office at a large American...
It was General Eyre Coote, an interesting man whose career came to an unfortunate end who coined the phrase “A Wandering Army”. The title presents us with the notion of The British Military Enlightenment in the 18th and early 19th centuries that was developed during...
