The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Post-War Orphans The Shilling Grange Series is about one woman’s struggle to run a children’s home in post-war Britain. I’ve long been interested in the changes brought in by Attlee’s reforming Labour government and writing a series set in an orphanage was a chance to...
With All Quiet on the Western Front having won the BAFTA for best film, it got me thinking as to my top 10 of war films. Now my lists are always subject to change depending on my mood, and whilst I enjoyed AQotWF, it hasn't made the list. Nor have other recent movies...
Ho Chi Minh & the Vietnam War I never imagined for one minute that my previous works on Third Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment during World War II would lead to something quite like Sign Here For Sacrifice. However, the synergy between the battalion’s...
You cannot seek to bribe nor twist - Thank God - the British journalist. But seeing what the man will do Unbribed, there’s no occasion to. That was Hilaire Belloc’s take on the British press and – although she has not quoted it – that appears to sum up the...
When planning Clara & Olivia, I knew I wanted the setting of the novel to be a 1933 production of Coppélia performed by the Vic-Wells Ballet at Sadler’s Wells theatre. However, by the time I had finished writing the novel, many more ballets had found their way...
Ian Gardner, congratulations on Sign Here for Sacrifice. What sort of unit was the 506th and what was their history? The 506th Airborne Infantry Regiment was a Regular Army organisation of which the Third Battalion (subject of this latest work) was born in early 67 to...
The Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Do languages constitute nations, or do nation-states constitute languages? That is one of the recurring questions in modern history, and it is not simply an intellectual brain-teaser. Languages, and the national passions they can stir,...
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...
Early in Richard Cohen’s excellent Making History he quotes his distinguished predecessor, the late John Burrow: ‘Almost all historians … have some characteristic weakness … It is often the source of their most interesting writing’. Cohen’s weaknesses are for story,...
Unionism & The Treaty The Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 led to civil war in Ireland as those for and against descended into bitter conflict. But what of Northern Ireland, established in May 1921? There were plans to include Ulster politicians in an...
