The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
The fifteenth century is generally accepted as beginning the Age of Discovery - or at least the discovery of the wider world by European powers. In Spice: The Sixteenth-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World, Roger Crowley has set himself the task of bringing to...
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...
Nelson: Hero of the Seas, by Dominic Sandbrook On 24 September 1805, Admiral Horatio Nelson was waiting for an audience with Lord Castlereagh, Secretary for War and the Colonies, at the Colonial Office. In the assembly room with him was Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had...
By the summer of 1097 the armies of the First Crusade had captured the Seljuk Turk capital of Nicaea and were moving on towards Jerusalem. In their way stood the fortress city of Antioch. They could not simply march around the city as this would leave a secure,...
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...
