The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
For Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, the spectacular collapse of the British Empire after the Second World War was like a bereavement. It even followed — almost to the letter — the classic sequence of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally,...
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...
On October 4th, 1983, Simon Sebag-Montefiore and Scott Martin met the Prime Minister at Number 10. What were your feelings about the jingoism displayed by the tabloid press during the Falklands conflict? What would you describe as jingoism? It is a word which is...
What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? I have always been fascinated by King Arthur and the dark ages, since a trip to Glastonbury Abbey at the age of 11. That and the navy in the 20th century took me through my childhood. That would perhaps...
What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? Each book has had a different genesis, although they overlap. The one about the Battle of Monte Cassino, was prompted by a book I was helping on as a freelance editor, called War of Nerves (by Ben...
As the world around us reels from one crisis to another, it is worth pausing occasionally to remind ourselves that things could always be worse. Seventy-five years ago, the world was emerging from a catastrophe that makes our own troubles look trivial. We still live...
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...
Pat Hobby shook his head in sadness at the news on the radio. The world was at war. His next whisky would be a double. France had fallen. Great Britain was standing alone. Hitler and his Nazi thugs controlled Europe. Pat spared a thought for Jakob Lowenstein, a...
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...
