The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Most general histories of the Second World War written in the English language tend to take a broad view across the Washington/London/Berlin/Moscow/Tokyo centres of power and do not focus especially on the Soviet element of the conflict. Of course, this is in part due...
In the popular mind, World War Two endures as the ‘Good War’: a heroic struggle against evil with a happy ending. But there have always been nagging questions, not least whether any conceivable post-war world was worth the sacrifice of 50 or 60 million dead. Why did a...
In the late summer of 1942, the Royal Navy embarked on an operation to relieve the island of Malta in the Mediterranean. With Axis forces surrounding Malta, the islanders were close to starvation until relief came in the form of Operation Pedestal. But it was an...
Stephen Keoghane, you’ve edited L. C. Wheeler’s memoirs – what was it about his account that attracted you to the project? The majority of accounts of armoured regiments in the Second World War are written by officers, often very senior and their stories are...
Money for Nothing: The South Sea Bubble and the Invention of Modern Capitalism, by Thomas Levenson After the 1707 Act of Union, the new Kingdom of Great Britain was experiencing a number of firsts; Isaac Newton had already brought ground-breaking understanding with...
The South Sea Bubble in 1721 was the first stock market crash of its kind, and ushered into the modern era a new way of managing government debt. Thomas, what parallels should we draw between the South Sea Bubble and more recent bubbles of today, like the dot-com...
Why is it so easy to hate and difficult to love? When societies fracture into warring tribes, we demonise those who oppose us. We tear down our statues, forgetting that what begins with the destruction of statues, often leads to the killing of people. The world is in...
Bernd von Kostka, Berlin was the epicentre of the Cold War, with multiple clandestine agencies operating there. Many operations took place in the decades up to the fall of the wall, but which were the most successful? Well, usually the most successful operations are...
As the light began to fade on 2 January 1777, a group of red-coated figures gathered in discussion on a small hill overlooking the village of Trenton, New Jersey. The urgency of their deliberations was emphasised by the rumbling sound of nearby musketry and cannon...
SAS Sea King Down Mark ‘Splash’ Aston’s reputation went before him at the Army’s reconnaissance school where I first met him in 1990, when he worked there as the divisional sergeant major. All the recce students who passed under his instruction knew something of the...
