The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
One cannot but marvel at Adolf Hitler’s quite remarkable audacity when he launched four major operations in the winter of 1944. This was at a time when the Allies were relentlessly advancing on all fronts and his exhausted armies were in a complete state of disarray...
Patrick Bishop and Robert Lyman discuss Operation Jubilee, the subject of Patrick’s new book, costing over 6,000 men, mostly Canadian. Louis Mountbatten played a key role in planning the operation, and it was claimed that lessons were learned for D-Day nearly two...
Glimpses of Britain in the summer '62. The actor Kenneth Williams “disgusted” in Hyde Park by the sight of men receiving “kissings & caressings” from their female companions; a sharp polio outbreak in Dundee; health minister Enoch Powell wanting hospitals to allow...
Beef and dairy products from the Netherlands, surplus to domestic requirements, had been sold to both Germany and Britain since the beginning of the war in 1914. But two years later, three issues made ensuring the smooth continuation of the Anglo-Dutch trade one of...
From the historian’s perspective, the Second World War, in the words of Al Murray, “is a bottomless pit.” With such a vast array of topics, how do you even attempt to bring this together in one festival? Well, the answer is that you don’t: you simply gather the best...
This book is the latest in a line of books published this year by SAS personnel as part of the fortieth anniversary of the Falklands Conflict, recounting their experiences down south it covers his early years as a difficult childhood with no money, growing up in post...
On the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, Captain John Tonkin and Lieutenant Richard Crisp parachuted into occupied France at the helm of an SAS troop tasked with preventing German reinforcements from being brought to the Normandy beachheads. Despite initial successes,...
Hitler's Greatest Mistake In early 1941, the U.S. Congress debated the passage of a landmark bill, one that would enable Britain to purchase £3 billion worth of arms from America. At the time, Britain was confronted with a financial and military crisis, encapsulated...
Elizabeth I's Final Years outlines the interwoven relationships and rivalries between politicians and courtiers surrounding England’s omnipotent queen in the years following the death in 1588 of the Earl of Leicester, whose life has been explored in Elizabeth I’s...
What first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? It began with genealogy and my wife’s connection to the Erskine’s of Mar. In researching them I was drawn into the story of Mary Queen of Scots but wanted to approach it from the point of view of the...
