The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Ghosts of the English Civil War Open the pages of almost any anthology of English ghost stories and, sooner rather than later, you will encounter the figure of a grim-faced Roundhead, a forlorn Cavalier or a pretty maid ravished by some rambling soldier, or...
On the 13th November 1715, two battles took place concurrently on British soil. The first, at Sherrifmuir in Scotland, saw John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar, with a Jacobite army of 12,000 men engage with a far smaller government force under the 2nd Duke of Argyll. After...
Holand Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on AmazonFrom the Publisher Books matter. Readers matter. Writers matter. As such, there is always a demand for new stories and new authors. Holand Press has been founded to help...
Pride's Purge Early in the morning of 6 December 1648, soldiers began to gather around Whitehall. Some were on foot, some on horse. A pale light was beginning to show in the sky. It was cold, and the atmosphere was edgy. At the heart of the mass of buildings that...
The Fairfax family occupies a unique and largely forgotten place in the story of America, as the only members of the House of Lords - the Peerage - to have been long-time residents of the United States for over 150 years. First as colonialists and then as citizens of...
When one looks at the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland under Oliver Cromwell in August 1658, would it have been fanciful to imagine a Republic for the foreseeable future, yet within two years the Stuarts were back on the throne? By August 1658, the...
Richard Cromwell had one of the strangest and saddest public lives in English history. An obscure country gentleman until he was 30, he then underwent a brief schooling in politics and government, before ruling as the second Protector for eight months. Vulnerable to...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on Amazon From the Publisher Chiselbury Publishing was founded 2011 to make the works of James Leasor, one of the bestselling and most prolific British authors of the second half of the...
In preparation for my meeting with Robert Harris (of course I’d read his latest novel, Act of Oblivion), I read a number of interviews and listened to his Desert Island Discs with Kirsty Young. 12 years old now, it is a fascinating and enlightening episode, and gave...
Leanda de Lisle’s biography of Henrietta Maria has burnt through the mist of four hundred years of propaganda. It pitches Henrietta at her own level. She is brought down from pious pedestals and raised up from the mire in which her reputation has often lain. With this...
