The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
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As a long-term Russophile with a grudge against the Bolsheviks I jumped at the chance to review this authoritative book, written through the unclouded lens of such an illustrious Russian historian. Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union is enthralling from the get-go,...
Casual students of history will know Elizabeth Stuart, queen of Bohemia, by her famous sobriquet – the Winter Queen (a name derived from a jibe against her husband) – or for her minor role in the Gunpowder Plot. Those a little more familiar with the period might...
As so often, the setting came first. The Great Fire of London raged for four days in September 1666, destroying most of the ancient walled City, including old St Paul’s, the medieval cathedral, and more than 13,000 houses. Seventy thousand people were made homeless,...
In July 1274 the Little Battle or Little War of Chalon took place on the Saone in Burgundy-Franche-Comté. This was a tournament that turned nasty when the host, the Count of Chalon, tried in vain to unhorse Edward I. The tourney at Chalon was a strange affair. Walter...
Almost a quarter of a century on from the publication of Antony Beevor’s groundbreaking and prize-winning Stalingrad, military history is still big business with books by Max Hastings, James Holland and my own SBS: Silent Warriors gracing the UK bestseller charts this...
When it comes to a battle, size does not always correlate with importance, nor is it necessarily won or lost entirely on the day itself. A small but significant action that may also have influenced another, later engagement occurred outside the town of Lemgo in 1638....
Gorbachev and the Chernobyl Disaster Whatever calculations Mikhail Gorbachev, his Prime Minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov, and Soviet economists had made for the long term, the catastrophe at the Chernobyl nuclear plant wrecked everything. The explosion of one of its four...
TIPSY CAKE Based on Eliza Acton, 1845, Modern Cookery As a confirmed trifle-hater, I briefly considered putting a nice, savoury trifle in here, based on lobster in a fried bread cup. But honesty compels me to admit it is more of a croustade, and a cheat’s way out. If...
Women's Football and the First World War December 5 2021 marks the 100-year anniversary of women’s football being effectively banned by the FA and it’s progress set back by decades. The ban was finally formally lifted 50 years later in 1971. Although there had been a...
