The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Helen, Women in Intelligence was very well received when first published. Is this an area of espionage history that is under-developed? Most definitely. It is an area where historians still need to research deeply in declassified files and record what the women did in...
Eighty years on from the end of the Second World War our understanding of it ought to be sophisticated enough by now to appreciate that all was not necessarily as it seemed. As tempting as it is, one should avoid viewing the events in Europe in 1939-1945 in simplistic...
Shakespearean Tale, Helen Castor Interview. How much can we divorce the two kings you have written about, from the characters of the Shakespeare plays? It is some of the most exquisite writing by one of the greatest writers there's ever been. So in that sense, it's...
Vladimir Putin clearly fancies himself something of a historian – even if, as a professional historian, I feel much of his ‘work’ would struggle to get a passing grade, laden as it is with factual inaccuracies and the careful cherry picking of evidence to fit his...
The case of Dr Roderigo Lopez, the only physician to English royalty ever to be executed for high treason, is not particularly well known, though Dominic Green’s The Double Life of Dr Lopez has done much to fill this gap in our knowledge. The case, however, provides a...
Will Erikson on Found Will many congratulations on the new book. There is plenty to ask about here, since this was such a major event in Britain’s recent history. Is that why you wanted to write it? Thank you. Very much so, it was divisive at the time, and it turned...
Wally Hammond In early April 1945, even while Hitler remained alive, directing phantom armies from his bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery garden in Berlin, the English cricket authorities decided that it might be possible to stage a number of Test-level matches with...
Mayne the SAS & the VC Blair ‘Paddy’ Mayne and a core of stalwarts were unwilling to let the history of this proud unit die with its dissolution. Instead, they took the Chronik of Schneeren town, unscrewed the brass bolts that held its spine together, removed the...
