The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Richard ForemanRobert Tombs produced one of the finest history books of the last five years, in the form of The English and their History. I am suitably looking forward to his new book, This Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe. It will no doubt be full of...
December, 1892 A hard overnight rain had frozen hard as iron on the roads and paths. This Christmas Eve, the whole of London seemed an ice rink. Detective Inspector George Bowman gazed through the window of the two-horse brougham he had hailed on Finchley Road. The...
Simon Sebag Montefiore 2020 has been a stellar year for brilliant books and given Covid, I don’t think I’ve read so many books. I recommend India in the Persianate Age by Richard M Eaton, a brilliant, gripping, refreshing and scholarly history of India from 1000AD to...
Damien Lewis My new book, SAS Band of Brothers is all about bringing history alive. Making a decades-old conflict like WWII feel accessible and real. In a similar vein I tend to read gripping, visceral narrative history that can and does inspire. So, don’t be put off...
What first attracted you to the period you work in? I came to it after quite a long ramble through other periods, beginning with a childhood fascination with Ancient Rome (I loved the helmets), followed by Medieval Europe (knights in armour, castles, cathedrals), the...
June 2017 You are primarily a Russian historian and in 2016 published your book ‘The Romanovs’, the story of twenty tsars and tsarinas who were the most successful dynasty of modern times. Why did you write ‘Jerusalem: The Biography’ when all your other work is on...
How did your experience as a war correspondent influence your work as a historian? A lot. It’s been a real help. It has been a great way to see the scene on the ground. The armies moving and empires falling. The espionage that comes with a sort of breakup of power....
In June 1772, Russian forces bombarded, stormed and captured Beirut, a fortress on the coast of Ottoman Syria. The Russians were backing their ally, a ruthless Arab despot. When they returned the next year, they occupied Beirut for almost six months. Then as now, they...
David Boyle I was researching a book about Richard the Lionheart’s journey across southern Europe in disguise in 1192, immediately before his arrest, and the legendary incident involving Blondel the troubadour (though strictly speaking he was a trouvere), and a...
Russia and Britain are old foes, and War and Peace is a complete fictional world with its own extraordinarily lifelike exuberance but, as with most Russian novels, it is also about Russia’s vision of itself — its quest for its rightful place in civilisation and its...
