The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Your book opens with the Battle of Fontenoy in 1745 when the British, despite superiority of firepower, were defeated by Saxe’s use of the terrain and positioning of his forces. The use of topography by senior officers would seem to be rather an obvious ‘innovation’ –...
In the First World War mass casualties were suffered in the sluggish trench warfare of the Western Front. Did we see enough involvement by the politicians to attempt to limit those losses? During the First World War British politicians made various but only sporadic...
Books of 2021 from Aspects of HistoryTimothy Ashby Author of Elizabethan Secret AgentAt the top of my favourites list of recent historical books is Leanda de Lisle´s Henrietta Maria. Although non-fiction, the book reads like a historical novel, with fascinating...
Winston Churchill refuses to die. Through film and television - not least The Crown and Darkest Hour - he reappears, chewing cigars and epitomising an imagined British bulldog spirit. He lives on, too, as an ogrish bogeyman, his appalling racial prejudices now freely...
Prince Rupert the Devil In September 1642, a month before the first major battle of the English Civil War, twenty-two-year-old Prince Rupert and his younger brother Maurice arrived at Worcester to escort a convoy of valuables to their uncle the king. The princes were...
How the Redcoat Learnt the Art of War By May 1779, the American Revolutionary War had transformed from a regional civil conflict into a global war, and Britain faced French aggression in the West Indies and India. The British government was forced to redistribute its...
Three aspects of Britain in the world wars stand out. The first was the reluctance with which Britain entered both wars but then the implacable nature in which it fought them. In the First World War Britain was the last of the Great Powers to enter the war; in the...
Back in the bad old days of the – last – Cold War, NATO held an annual exercise when national leaders and senior military officers war gamed how they would handle a crisis. Called WINTEX, these exercises were constructed within the then tight protocols that governed...
Ronald Hutton’s Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe examines four goddess-like figures from the medieval period to the present day: Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Lady of the Night, and the Cailleach. Packed with detail and insight – Hutton...
When Alexander reached the very edge of his vast new empire on the banks of the River Indus, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. Having visited the British Library’s new exhibition on the great man, he might have saved his tears because the visitor can...
