The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
I keep overhearing people debating between themselves the comparison of Robert Oppenheimer and Alan Turing, his British near contemporary - Turing was six years younger - who was the originator of modern computing. I feel as if this is also a debate that I ought to...
Iain, Checkpoint Charlie was your second history book, but your first on the 20th century. What is it about Checkpoint Charlie that fascinates us, nearly 35 years after the Wall came down? For those like me who grew up as teenagers in the 1980s, the Cold War was a...
Michael H. Kater’s After The Nazis is a tremendous study into life and culture in West Germany after World War II up until German Reunification. Throughout the book, Kater sheds light on a side of West Germany’s history that is often overshadowed by its geopolitical...
In honour of Aspects of History launching its new podcast, Spymasters, I was asked to recommend five spy novels. I wouldn't say these are my definitive five favourite spy novels, as I could wake up tomorrow and recommend five others, but I hope that the choices give...
The Mysterious Death of Joseph Stalin Stalin was feeling weak on account of his unusually high blood pressure. He was also complaining of dizziness. Yet his temper was as fiery as ever on the evening of 28 February 1953. He had invited a few of his closest comrades to...
Michael H. Kater, congratulations on After the Nazis. You’ve written about how important democracy was for culture to thrive in Germany. Were there any cultural achievements under the Nazis? In the Third Reich, cultural achievements in line with a democratic value...
The Graveyard of Empires: The Soviets Go Into Afghanistan The popular understanding of Cold War history is that the Communist takeover of Afghanistan in 1978 was a continuation of the “Great Game” and engineered by the Soviets, the truth is more complex. The Afghan...
Culture & Democracy in West Germany In the dictatorship of the Third Reich, the absence of democracy meant the absence of individual liberties. For visual artists, musicians, and men and women of letters, film and the stage, next to governmental content criticism...
I have read a good deal about the Kennedys, both generally and in research detail when one of my detective novels featured the family patriarch, Joe, as a character. Joe Kennedy was not a very nice man, and he passed on some of his less pleasant characteristics to...
Pirate Irwin, what first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? Summer holidays when I was a nipper in France sparked a fascination with the moral conundrum faced by the people with a war hero Petain having agreed to collaborate with the Nazis to preserve...
