The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
The Essex Rebellion: Who Tells the Story In August 1999 Cornwall experienced a total eclipse of the sun on a cloudy day. Positioned along the south coast, BBC and other journalists reported the national disappointment. Locals and tourists on the north coast had a...
On the 13th November 1715, two battles took place concurrently on British soil. The first, at Sherrifmuir in Scotland, saw John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar, with a Jacobite army of 12,000 men engage with a far smaller government force under the 2nd Duke of Argyll. After...
The Deadly World War II Mission Over the Roof of the World At seventeen thousand feet and halfway from India to China, pilot Joseph Dechene had lost both his aircraft’s engines to ice. His lumbering C-46 cargo plane was now a glider. With white, ice-laden clouds...
On a grey evening last autumn in the outer concourse of drab Euston Station, I took pity on two teachers and their assistants who were corralling a large group of school-children. I offered them a distraction. We moved across to one of the two statues – not that of...
Deborah Lawrenson on The Secretary What drew you to the Cold War era specifically, 1958 Moscow, as the setting for The Secretary? Growing up around the world as an embassy child, I was always aware that my parents were living an unusual and interesting life. My...
David, your novel follows a British battalion on its tour of Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Why did you want to write about this difficult period in British and Irish history? To some extent the Troubles are a forgotten ‘war’ and quite unlike almost any...
As we approach the 80th anniversary of VE Day in May, the risk of losing undocumented personal stories of the Second World War grows ever stronger. This is why Bryan Wiles’ debut novel The Chocolate Suitcase is such a remarkable achievement. For many years, Wiles was...
