The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
For 14 years, Gabriele Tadino had faithfully served the Republic of Venice. One of the new breed of soldier, the military engineers, Tadino had done well in service of the Republic. The son of a doctor from Martinengo, a small town that was part of Venice’s Stato da...
What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? As a student of German literature, I wrote my PhD thesis on the dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann, whose life and work spanned the decades from the 1860s to the 1940s. It was a period dense with momentous...
Who was Edith Tudor-Hart? For a long time, and especially after the revelation of her crucial role in the creation of modern Britain's most notorious spy ring – the Cambridge Five – she existed more as a cipher than as a real person. I first encountered her name well...
Books Click on any of the books covers below to either buy or get more information on AmazonArticles Click on the links below to read the full article[dpdfg_filtergrid custom_query="advanced" use_taxonomy_terms="on" multiple_taxonomies="name_of_author"...
Hi James – your book, The Big Little War, was published just over three years ago. It seems apt that this month marks the 85th anniversary of the coup which led to the extraordinary events that you recount in the book, and you have a new, extended edition of the book...
King of Kings begins the Brunanburh series, which recreates the events that led to the mighty battle of Brunanburh, and it’s aftermath. Why was this story so appealing? There are rare moments in the history of Saxon England where we seem to have a lot of information...
The 10th century sees the creation of what we would recognise as ‘England’ – the combining of the Saxon kingdoms of Wessex with Mercia, with the additions of Kent, the kingdom of the East Angles, the Danish Five Boroughs, and the kingdom of York, and also the...
We used to joke at Staff College when the command appointments for exercises were being handed out that at least we couldn’t be asked to command the rear guard on Napoleon’s 1812 retreat from Moscow. Of all the military operations in history, it is hard to think of...
“Her efforts did not produce definitive change or unqualified success, but in helping to shape the events of a pivotal century, she left legible traces of a consequential life.” With typical precision, Bruce Chilton ends Berenice: Queen in Roman Judaea. Throughout...
