The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Will Erikson on Found Will many congratulations on the new book. There is plenty to ask about here, since this was such a major event in Britain’s recent history. Is that why you wanted to write it? Thank you. Very much so, it was divisive at the time, and it turned...
Chasing Shadows In the summer of 2003, I was one of around 1,200 American, British, and Australian intelligence personnel sent to Baghdad to form the Iraq Survey Group (ISG). The task of this unprecedented field intelligence operation was simple: locate the Weapons of...
By 10pm on the night of 9th June 1983 BBC Television centre was humming. In Studio Two, amid a beige version of the set from Alien, David Dimbleby and Robin Day were about to start the election results show, though everybody already knew Thatcher was going to walk it....
Mark, many congratulations on the new book. There is a lot of myth surrounding Russia’s history, not least from Vladimir Putin. How much of its military past is in the average Russian’s consciousness? More, honestly, than we might anticipate from a Western standpoint....
The Admiral’s Eyes The little pocket notebook is easily missed amongst the Nelson manuscripts in the British Library. In it the admiral noted every alteration of course, with the depth-sounding taken as the Victory came onto a fresh tack, leading the Mediterranean...
The Wedding to End All Weddings – 20 November 1947 Big puffy fairytale nuptials that establish a new royal name overnight - Diana, Fergie, Kate, Meghan - are now considered standard fare but a large celebrity-style wedding is a relatively recent confection. Pomp and...
Every work of fiction starts with a single idea. An assassin hired to kill a president (The Day Of The Jackal), an elderly fisherman who loses his prize to a shark (The Old Man And The Sea), a doctor who transforms into a beast at night and commits murder (Jekyll and...
What the Quiet American Teaches Us “I’m not involved… It had been an article of my creed,” Thomas Fowler boasts in The Quiet American, Graham Greene’s magnificent novel of Western embroilment in 1950s Vietnam. Not involved, Fowler insists, in the Indochina conflict;...
The House of Windsor in the Modern World It transpires that prior to her death, our late Queen had been ill for some time. Bone marrow cancer by all accounts. The end is rarely easy irrespective of privilege and position; even divine right and executive religious...
Natural Causes is Stephen Mills’ memoir about his life as a wildlife filmmaker, conservation journalist and author. Having made, and written, over forty films for television, Mills has experienced a variety of landscapes, studied and championed numerous species, and...
