The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
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...
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...
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 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...
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 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...
We are in a modern suburban house occupied by a boy and his father. The boy is a teenager, with an enquiring mind and a predilection for bad jokes. The somewhat inept father is usually the butt of these and the banter adds to the humorous lightness of touch that...
Paul Wreyford, many congratulations on the book. Why did you choose these particular figures – Henry VIII, Napoleon, Shakespeare and Cleopatra to name but a few? I just went for some of the most famous people in history and from a wide range of eras. Everyone will...
My teenage son and daughter reckon that most history books are dull and boring. And you know what…I tend to agree with them. No, please don’t stop reading. Don’t throw me and my books on the fire – I’m no history heretic (or perhaps I am). Like you, I love history. So...
Jimmy Burns’ biography of Walter Bell, charts the life of one of Britain’s most successful and influential intelligence officers. The fact that Bell is so little known outside of intelligence circles testifies to this success. Walter Bell appears to have been a...
