The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
In the 1950s and 60s, Word War Two was a recent memory for most families who had nearly all been involved in the struggle one way or another. At that time, escape stories and the daring exploits of servicemen who had been captured regularly appeared on shop...
This is the true story of Agent Sonya – wife, mother and Soviet spy. Ursula Kuczynski was born into a secular Jewish family in Germany. Like many Jews of her generation, there was no choice in 1930s Europe in the ideological struggle between Communism and Fascism. It...
It was the usual grey and cold day in Cold War Berlin, November 1973, with the first really cold east winds sweeping in across the flat plains of Eastern Europe that stretch as far as the Urals in the Soviet Union. Thinking about nothing in particular, and about to...
When I first saw this book, I thought it was another generic book on the SAS, which would join a long list of similar publications. How wrong I was. This is a thrilling and very specific book, and the clue that it is not a general account of the SAS lies in the...
Adrian Goldsworthy has been known until now as a bestselling historian of ancient Rome. Having written acclaimed biographies of Julius Caesar and Augustus Caesar, it is refreshing to see him enter the world of ancient Greece, and take on the challenge of perhaps its...
The two heavily armed carriages rattled slowly into the central square of Tiflis (now known as Tbilisi), the state capital of Georgia. Seated resplendent in one of the carriages was the State Bank’s cashier. The other carriage was packed with police and soldiers....
It is the story that every schoolchild is brought up on (or at least it was when I was at school in the dim distant past); that brave King Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings by being shot in the eye with an arrow. But did it really happen? Have millions of...
Historical Parallels I like it when current affairs start ringing historical bells, and the former French ambassador to the UK Sylvie Bermann came up with a real clanger recently when she averred that the consequence of Brexit was to bring together 27 countries in a...
Curiosities of London Life: A Portrait of Victorian London by Charles Manby Smith
Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia: A History of the Early Church by William M Ramsay
