The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
One of our most cherished and favourite authors, Gordon Corrigan, passed in the last week. Gordon was a soldier, broadcaster, historian and friend. He wrote, on a variety of periods and subjects, with both scholarship and style. He was one of our most popular guests...
Britain at War is a magazine that “does exactly what it says on the tin,” focusing on Britain’s wartime experience. What, for you, defines the magazine’s core identity and mission? On the face of it, it’s rather simple. Britain at War is a tribute to this nation’s –...
John – your book, General Hastings 'Pug' Ismay: Soldier, Statesman, Diplomat was published nearly two years ago. Can you give us an outline of the life of ‘Pug’ Ismay, a man you describe as ‘an unusual subject for a biography’? Who was he, and provide us with some...
It is an enduring trope of spy fiction that finds retired spies, their glories long behind them, approached and re-activated for one final mission. But sometimes, reality outdoes fiction and Helen Fry’s masterly new study of wartime resistance in Belgium relates how...
Books of 2025 from Aspects of HistoryZeb Baker-Smith Editor of Aspects of HistorySeven Rivers by Vanessa Taylor explores how humanity and waterways have shaped one another across millennia, offering vivid historical portraits of the Nile, Danube, Ganges, Thames,...
In the history of the British Secret Service, SIS/MI6, two of its intelligence networks have been given high acclaim and both were in Belgium. They were La Dame Blanche (the White Lady) in the First World War and the Clarence Service in the Second World War. La Dame...
Anywhere But The Western Front More than 100 years after the guns finally fell silent, our memory of the outbreak of the World War One is still firmly centered on what happened in Belgium and France. This is perhaps not surprising, as, in many ways, it was here that...
Gretchen, your book, The Treaty, dealt with the negotiations for the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. As an Australian who lives in Dublin, why did you want to write about them? The idea for the book came from a chance encounter in an archive. While I was studying for a...
Imagine driving along a quiet countryside road in England or Germany. It is a sunny day, and the surroundings are calm, with only the sound of the car’s engine, birdsong, and the occasional gust of wind. Then you see a detour near a town or in a remote area pointing...
