January 2025 will be the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, a single event which has come to symbolise the Holocaust. No-one could claim that in the eighty years since there’s been a shortage of literature on the Holocaust: a search on...
Chiselbury
Justin Kerr-Smiley on A Leap in the Dark
Justin, A Leap in the Dark is a historical novel set in the criminal underworld of Edinburgh. Why did you want to write it? I grew up in Scotland and spent part of my youth in Edinburgh, which had and still has a strong hold on my imagination. A Leap In the Dark is...
Diana Mara Henry on I Am André
Diana, many congratulations on your new book, the story of ‘André’ Joseph Scheinmann. How did you find out about this extraordinary man? His son and I were classmates at Harvard, though we never met at university there. When Michel discovered, in our 25th reunion...
I Am André
I Am André Cher Camarade ... mon capitaine ... mon lieutenant ... Monsieur Le Neveu ... 31AQ ... MI6 #99421 ... #4368 at Natzweiler and #101739 at Dachau ... Martin ... Turquoise ... interprète ... Herr Dolmetscher ... 0419064, French Liaison Officer ... Agent from C...
Forgotten Armour, by Jack Bowsher
Jack Bowsher has set out in this book – his first – to reprise the role of armour in the Burma campaign. He has achieved much more, however, as this excellent book is an accessible study of the campaign as a whole. It has much to recommend it. The fruit of lots of...
Fairfax Of Virginia
The Fairfax family occupies a unique and largely forgotten place in the story of America, as the only members of the House of Lords - the Peerage - to have been long-time residents of the United States for over 150 years. First as colonialists and then as citizens of...
Battle of Meiktila
The battle of the tennis court is one of the most famous actions in the war against Japan. The vicious siege of Kohima in the spring and early summer of 1944 saw the embattled British and Indian garrison of that tiny village in the mountains of Assam (now Nagaland),...
Natural Causes, by Stephen Mills
Natural Causes is Stephen Mills’ memoir about his life as a wildlife filmmaker, conservation journalist and author. Having made, and written, over forty films for television, Mills has experienced a variety of landscapes, studied and championed numerous species, and...
Stephen Mills on Natural Causes
Congratulations on the publication of your memoir, Natural Causes. What made you decide that now was the time to write a memoir about your experiences as a wildlife filmmaker and environmental activist? Thankyou Ella. I think my career coincided with a sort of Golden...
Nature: Challenges & Changes
Nature: Challenges & Changes I live in the polders of the Netherlands, within sight of what used to be called the Zuiderzee in the old atlases of my childhood. Outside my window where I write I look onto a large pool of water, formed by the confluence of the...