The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
In the winter of 1359 a young English soldier was taken prisoner during the siege of Reims, the holy city where French kings were anointed. The captive Englishman was a page in the household of Prince Lionel, one of the sons of King Edward III, and the siege was a...
Among the knights of Edward I there was a certain Pascual de Valencia, called the 'Adalide'. Pascual, a knight of Aragon in modern-day Spain, was just one of several foreign knights serving in the household of the English king. There were also several Germans, any...
When it was announced that Franz Ferdinand, the Heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, would visit Bosnia to attend manoeuvres in June 1914. It fell to General Oskar Potiorek, the military governor to organise the visit. This was a task Oskar Potiorek threw himself into...
As town and cities go, Bath – despite having been home until recently to several Ministry of Defence establishments - is known for its waters, its social history and its architecture rather than its bellicosity. There is no military museum in Bath and, when it came to...
I can still recall my growing sense of discovery at the British Library one morning when I found a story my Dad told us as kids appearing in every single national newspaper I searched – the fusty Times excepted. I learned that one night in September 1943 an “entire...
My book The Happy Traitor began more than 20 years ago when I chanced upon an article in a Dutch magazine. It was by a radio journalist who had interviewed George Blake, a British Dutchman who had started out spying for the British and wound up a KGB double agent. I’d...
