The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Marek, many congratulations on the new book, The Stories Old Towns Tell. Why did you choose the seven cities (Frankfurt; Würzburg; Rothenburg ; Prague; Warsaw; Lublin and Vilnius) – did you use a set of criteria, or was it your own experiences of visiting them? Thank...
Europe’s Old Towns, the historic quarters at the heart of cities across the continent, tell stories about European history that date back to the Middle Ages. Some are epic narratives; some are fairy-tale fantasies. But some of the most powerful stories they tell are...
The music in my ears was Elgar’s Nimrod and Tallis’ Fantasia theme by Vaughan Williams. The sun was absent, hidden behind a cloudy sky as the giant 15 inch naval guns pointed towards the heavens and I arrived in the gardens of the Imperial War Museum. With a sense of...
James Dunford Wood, what first attracted you to the 1930s and beyond? I inherited a set of war diaries written by my father, covering 1939-1946 and RAF campaigns in Iraq, Burma and North-West Europe. Can you tell us a little about your research? For my book The Big...
Bryan Wiles on The Chocolate Suitcase Can you tell us about Bronek and Anna – did they inspire the novel? Although not materially wealthy or with much formal education, Bronek and Anna had an enviable sureness in the values that guided them through life. Rooted in the...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on Amazon Articles Click on the links below to read the full article [dpdfg_filtergrid custom_query="advanced" use_taxonomy_terms="on" multiple_taxonomies="name_of_author"...
I first came across the name Habbaniya as a 14-year-old schoolboy. I can remember surreptitiously leafing through the pages of a tattered, hard-cover diary inscribed 'India - Iraq 1939-42'. My father’s handwriting was barely decipherable, but the entry headlined...
The Polish Odyssey ‘The Chocolate Suitcase’ is a novel, but it is closely based on the personal stories of Anna and Bronek Baranek and their Polish family during the Second World War. Their recollections were surprisingly vivid and agreed with the historical record....
Few people have ever heard of him. Yet he was successively: Churchill`s chief staff officer throughout the Second World War; chief of staff to the last British viceroy of India during the Partition in 1947; a cabinet minister when Churchill returned to power in 1951;...
The Imperial War Museum has started a series of events to coincide with the unveiling of the new Second World War Galleries at their London headquarters. Celebrities (and two experts) take visitors on a tour of how their families contributed to World War Two, and so...
