The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
James Davey’s fascinating Tempest is set against the backdrop of Britain’s naval war against Revolutionary France of 1793-1801. In the Age of Revolution, it did not escape those below decks that while their enemy espoused liberty and equality their own condition...
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryAlan Bardos Author of The Dardanelles ConspiracyQueen High by CJ Carey is the sequel to Widow Land and a counter factual/dystopian novel; in a similar vein to 1984, Fatherland and Brave New World. It is set in a 1950s Britain that...
This book has such a level of coherence and insight that it will be read in a single session. Any book that manages to encompass the notion of L. P. Hartley that ‘the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there’; Voltaire’s observation on the execution...
Ben Wheatley, many congratulations on your new book The Panzers of Prokhorovka. Was it the greatest tank battle(s) of the war? Thank you. It’s now generally accepted that it was the fighting around Brody and Dubno between the 26th and 29th July 1941, rather than...
The Chalke Valley History Festival has been running since 2011. How has the festival evolved over the years? The festival began in June 2011 on a small scale and as a fundraiser for the local cricket club. I think the first year we had just 12 talks across one...
It is important to remember (and often overlooked in the West) that despite suffering a very high number of armoured losses on 12 July during the battle of Prokhorovka the Soviets achieved their central aim of halting the German II SS Panzer Korps’ drive on the town...
Our Future Was Forged by War In this new book, bestselling historian James Holland presents a readable, powerful narration of the key moments of the Second World War, vividly brought to life in full colour with illustrations from award-winning artist Keith Burns....
The poet of Paradise Lost was better known in his own time as a pamphleteer. From 1641 to 1644, his writing optimistically imagined the world that might emerge from all the turmoil of civil war. It was an idealised, classical paradise of goodness, culture, education,...
Many books have been written about the Vietnam War over the years. This, by Ian Gardner, a British reservist paratrooper, focuses on a specific American paratroop unit’s experiences in Vietnam for a 12 month period between November 1967 and October 1968. As such, it’s...
Soldiers: Great Stories of War & Peace Most civilians have no idea how soldiers think, how they react or what motivates them, while journalists are constrained by deadlines and column inches and find it difficult to expand when presented with the broader canvas of...
