The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
A recent article in The Guardian featured a new book of short stories by Colm Tóibín: “Tóibín’s short stories, particularly in his 2026 collection The News from Dublin, are fundamentally concerned with exploring the internal and external lives of characters living at...
In a lonely corner of eastern Poland, not far from the River Bug, there is a stretch of countryside that looks entirely unremarkable. The villages are small and sleepy, the roads narrow and uneven, the fields flat and windswept. When I visited last November, a cold...
One swallow does not necessarily a summer make, but the signs are positive that World War II with Tom Hanks will live up to some of its pre-release hype. The World at War, the critically and commercially successful documentary series first aired in 1973, narrated by...
Philip, welcome to Aspects of History. Congratulations on the upcoming release of Empire’s Witness: A Soldier’s Secret War Diary 1942–45. What were your memories of your grandfather, Corporal Day, prior to beginning this project, and how and why did his “quiet life...
Operation Berlin is the first of a new historical mystery series set in 1930s Europe which is to be known as The Foreign Correspondent series. Its author is Michael Ridpath, an extremely accomplished one, several of whose previous books I have read and enjoyed. I...
For some of us it might seem that there was little more to add to what we already knew about the last days of the Nazi regime in and around Berlin. Yet this meticulous description and analysis by Prit Buttar proves that this is not the case. His thorough research into...
Welcome back, Giles – we’re exactly two years on from the release of The Stalin Affair, and that question of the nature of diplomacy between allies seems ever more relevant in recent weeks and months in 2026. The ‘impossible alliance’ you discuss between Franklin D....
In 1942 Hitler turned on Stalin and drove towards the Caucasus, aiming for the oil that would sustain the German advance. If he succeeded, the balance of the war could tilt. To hold them at bay, Stalin needed supplies quickly; fuel, vehicles, and equipment. Britain...
