The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
CHF 2024: Day 5 Cassino ’44, James Holland The searing sun gave way to cooler cloudier weather on Friday, the day of the military big beasts, James Holland, Max Hastings, Saul David and Anthony Beevor. James Holland’s account of the battle of Monte Cassino follows in...
CHF 2024: Day 4 Ukraine: Rhetoric & Reality: Francis Dearnley, David Knowles, Hanna Shelest, Dominic Nicholls The formidable team from the Telegraph’s Ukraine podcast attracted one of the biggest turnouts as they tackled the gap between rhetoric and reality in the...
CHF 2024: Day 3 The Chalk Stream, Feargal Sharkey Undertones singer Feargal Sharkey gave what might have been the most anticipated talk of the festival, telling the story of how England’s unique chalk streams are dying because of negligence by the privatised water...
CHF 2024: Day 2 The first two mornings of the festival are given over to the excellent schools’ programme. Busloads of youngsters descend on the site and get a special programme of talks and tours. The accompanying teachers all report game changing levels of new...
CHF 2024: Day 1 The festival site looked resplendent in the dappled June light, bouts of sunshine alternating with welcome cloud cover and a gentle breeze. Regular visitors will notice some changes to the layout. The Evelyn Partners tent has moved and is now a giant...
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of Rising TideMunich Wolf, by Rory Clements is set in 1935 Munich. When the body of a young English socialite is found, Kripo detective Sebastian Wolff is called in to solve the politically sensitive case. The...
A couple of years ago at the Chalke History Festival, General Sir Simon Mayall, a popular member of the red trouser brigade, Balliol man, and retired military top brass strode onto stage to rapturous applause. Introducing his recently published memoirs he delivered a...
Mycenae: Behind the Myths Most ancient Greek myths take place during a heroic age, when men fought with monsters and gods walked among us. The roots of these myths are in an often-overlooked period of Greek prehistory: the Bronze Age. The Greek poet Hesiod identifies...
Books of 2023 from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of The Dardanelles ConspiracyMy book of the year is SAS Forged in Hell. The next instalment of Damien Lewis’ WW II odyssey with the men of 1 SAS, as they become the ‘tip of the spear’ in the invasion of Sicily...
On the day I meet with Simon Sebag Montefiore to discuss his new book, The World: A Family History, the Russians have plundered the body of Prince Grigory Potemkin who was the subject of Sebag’s breakthrough book in 2001. Catherine the Great & Potemkin (Aspects of...
