The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Anywhere But The Western Front More than 100 years after the guns finally fell silent, our memory of the outbreak of the World War One is still firmly centered on what happened in Belgium and France. This is perhaps not surprising, as, in many ways, it was here that...
Santa, your latest book, Secrets of the Starlit Sea, has recently been published. By our calculations that makes it your 32nd book since Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree back in 2001. Do you have a favourite? It’s very hard to choose a favourite because at the time of...
The History behind The Bratinsky Affair "It is not the wimpled version of history that is interesting but its brutality." - Hilary Mantel The story of Countess Irina Bratinsky, née O’Rourke de Breffny, has its roots in the religious wars of 17th-century Ireland and...
Historical Heroes: Chiune Sugihara Chiune Sugihara is the little-known Japanese World War 2 hero who saved thousands of refugees with his pen. Through his quiet defiance, he issued what became known as ‘Visas for Life’, helping an estimated 6,000 Jewish refugees...
The Five Armies That Made Europe Regrettably, war is inevitable. Many of us who have had the privilege of being born in Western democracies after 1945 have been spared having to confront war directly. This has created a false optimism that future generations may not...
Echoing Greens: How Cricket Shaped the English Imagination, by Brendan Cooper It is now a cliché - perhaps always has been - to refer to cricket as a rich quarry for artistic achievement, even as mainstream coverage becomes less fixated on the written word and more...
Korea: War Without End, by Richard Dannatt and Robert Lyman This is of seminal importance to our appreciation of the importance of the Korean War. The authors combine strategic military awareness with the necessity of providing historical analysis built on thorough...
Strictly Murder - Review Should you be in the mood for a taut, theatrical thriller then Strictly Murder at The Questors Theatre in Ealing should satisfy your appetite. Set on the cusp of the Second World War, the two-act play, located in a cottage in Provence, is...
Alex, this is the second novel in the series. What has happened since the end of Every Spy a Traitor and the beginning of The Second Traitor? The most important thing which has happened is that the Second World War is now underway – the first book ends on the day...
Gretchen, your book, The Treaty, dealt with the negotiations for the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. As an Australian who lives in Dublin, why did you want to write about them? The idea for the book came from a chance encounter in an archive. While I was studying for a...
