The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Dr Wheatley is on a mission. His mission is to disprove the long articulated Russian stance that the tank action at Prokhorovoka was an annihilation of the elite SS II Panzer Corps by the Soviet Army in the southeast corner of the Russian Front in July 1943. Whilst...
Capital of Spies For anyone who lived in West Berlin during the sixties, seventies or eighties, the very mention of the great city’s name on a news bulletin brought a frisson of excitement with memories of Russian checkpoints, the Wall and constant flow of spy stories...
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...
Berlin emerged after the end of World War II as a geographically and politically ideal base of operations for secret service activities. As the point of intersection between East and West, Berlin exerted an almost magical attraction on intelligence agencies. The city...
James Stejskal, your new novel is set around the Iranian revolution and the seizure of the US Embassy – why did you pick this event to write about? It’s an event I experienced first-hand as a member of a Special Forces unit that was involved in the rescue attempt....
Appointment in Tehran is the second book in James Stejskal’s Snake Eater Chronicle series of novels which features a large cast of characters and despite the fact it doesn’t have a main protagonist to follow but several it still manages to be deeply engrossing. That...
Appointment in Tehran In his apartment several blocks from the university campus, Abdul Mezad knelt on a carpet facing the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina and prayed. He was one of the few people in the city who knew what was about to happen. Although the Shah had...
Writing history in a post-feminist era, when readers are especially alert to issues of social and racial justice, requires a sensitive approach to modern opinions. Authors today have to accept that many influential academics are highly critical of government authority...
Rupert Wieloch’s new book, Liberating Libya, colourfully charts the relatively underknown history of Libya and its relationship with Britain. Bringing to bear the author’s full foreign policy expertise, personal knowledge of Libya and extensive research, it is a...
Simon Elliott is a busy man. When he's not appearing in documentaries, working as an archaeologist and lecturing in Pompeii, he is a prolific writer of ancient Roman history, most recently with an account of the IX Hispania (Roman Britain's Missing Legion). He's now...
