The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Not every distinguished historian announces his arrival by the roar of a V8 engine, but Robin Prior is no ordinary historian and - for me at least - this was to be no ordinary lunch. I was planning a new book, the final volume in my Finest Hour trilogy about Britain...
A Death in Berlin is the third instalment of Simon Scarrow’s excellent Berlin Noir series featuring Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke. A former racing car driver turned police detective. It’s May 1940, the Second World War is less than a year old and its all quiet on...
Keith Lowe has built a well-deserved reputation in recent years as a chronicler of the interface between military operations and civil society, especially once the fighting on a battlefield has ended. For instance, his ‘Savage Continent’ tracked the long, wearying...
Damien Lewis's third instalment of his SAS 'greatest escapes of World War II series is a corker. It has all the elements Lewis 'readers have come to expect, painstaking research carefully blended with firsthand accounts that allow the men concerned to tell their...
The Stalin Affair: The Impossible Alliance that Won the War What British diplomat earned his place in history by penning a note to his superior in London commenting mischievously on the name of his Turkish counterpart, Mustapha Kunt? You've guessed it:...
My recent book Who Will Rescue Us? represents over ten years of historical research on a group of primarily Jewish children who fled Nazi Germany and Austria. The goals of my study were multiple: I wanted to grasp- to the extent possible- what it felt like to be a...
Victory '45: The End of the War in Eight Surrenders, by James Holland & Al Murray This brilliant book is what you get when you marry two first-class historians (and communicators) of the Second World War. I enjoyed its pace, its storytelling and the sheer...
In the introduction to Lest We Forget, Tessa Dunlop writes: “Monuments and statues are inanimate, static entities that depend on their relationship with human beings for relevance and agency.” This statement goes to the heart of this brilliant book. Each monument is...
The Stories Old Towns Tell: A Journey through the Cities at the Heart of Europe This is in many ways a book about the history which history forgot. In it, the cities of central and eastern Europe come alive with a cornucopia of intriguing facts and fascinating...
When I was asked to review this book, I jumped at the chance. Although being ex-RAF, I had no knowledge of the events that took place in Iraq in May 1941, and was keen to learn. Little, if anything, has been written about what became one of the most important...
