The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
How did the Ordinary German Soldier Behave During the War and the Holocaust? In 1997, I unearthed the war diaries of two Luftwaffe security battalions from the years 1942 to 1944. These diaries meticulously chronicled the battalion, company, platoon, and squad level...
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...
Rachel Bellman’s play, These Demons, comes to life in an unkempt cottage set, staged at Battersea’s Theatre503 in London. A dark comedy-horror, These Demons is a layered piece that explores Jewish demonology, an arguably niche subject not often depicted in theatre,...
The War for the Soul of the Nation When the tide of the Eastern Front turned at Stalingrad and the Red Army rolled over the territory of Poland in pursuit of the rapidly retreating German forces, some Poles saw it as an invasion; others welcomed it as a liberation....
Roger, firstly, can you tell us a little bit about the origins of your latest book? Who were the forgers and how did you find out about their story? The forgers were a group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists – known as the Ładoś Group – who were illegally...
The Buckingham History Festival, which takes place in the celebrated market town over the weekend of 15-17 September, is one that subscribers to Aspects of History will relish. There’s a particular emphasis this year on the Early Modern period – which is no surprise...
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising In all my novels, there are a number of plot lines which converge at the end of the book, but in my new book, Agent in Peril the core plot is based around the Battle of the Ruhr in 1943, the RAF’s bombing campaign from March-July that year...
I first came across the story of Frank Foley while researching a book on British intelligence. One of the former MI6 officers I met told me about a wartime British spy whose skills as a agent handler were so good that they were still held up as an example to new spies...
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of The Dardanelles ConspiracyQueen High by CJ Carey is the sequel to Widow Land and a counter factual/dystopian novel; in a similar vein to 1984, Fatherland and Brave New World. It is set in a 1950s Britain that...
The Island of Extraordinary Captives Marjan Rawicz surveyed the crowd gathered on the terraced lawn in front of his grand piano. Rawicz was used to giving well-attended performances at illustrious venues: during the past few years the forty-two-year-old musician had...
