The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryPaul BernardiTaking a well-earned break from the adventures of Beobrand in his much-loved Bernicia Chronicles series, Matthew Harffy moves forward the best part of one hundred and fifty years in this, his most recent and...
The Wolfson History Prize 2021 Rebecca Clifford Rebecca, congratulations on your nomination for the Wolfson History Prize of 2021 from Aspects of History. Why did you choose your particular subject? This is a two-pronged answer. Most important prong, I’ve worked with...
Rewriting History There seems to be an increasingly alarming trend nowadays for some people to consider that the story of the Second World War was the story of the Holocaust. They may mention the Holocaust in any word association exercise with the Second World War -...
What is your approach to researching your novels? Has the process changed over the years? I used to commit to a lot more preliminary reading before putting pen to paper, but there is a danger of over researching sometimes. There are a few periods I am now familiar...
Holocaust Memorial Day 2021 During the Holocaust, Jewish partisan groups and resistance organisations launched attacks, created underground networks, led rescue missions and sabotage operations, and documented their experiences at grave risk. This is no secret -...
Richard ForemanRobert Tombs produced one of the finest history books of the last five years, in the form of The English and their History. I am suitably looking forward to his new book, This Sovereign Isle: Britain In and Out of Europe. It will no doubt be full of...
Simon Sebag Montefiore 2020 has been a stellar year for brilliant books and given Covid, I don’t think I’ve read so many books. I recommend India in the Persianate Age by Richard M Eaton, a brilliant, gripping, refreshing and scholarly history of India from 1000AD to...
Damien Lewis My new book, SAS Band of Brothers is all about bringing history alive. Making a decades-old conflict like WWII feel accessible and real. In a similar vein I tend to read gripping, visceral narrative history that can and does inspire. So, don’t be put off...
I have just finished reading Margaret MacMillan’s War: How Conflict Shaped Us, which I found compellingly absorbing. Fast-paced and refreshingly short at no more than 270 pages of text, the book covers every aspect of war from prehistoric times to the present first...
