Head of Zeus Archives - Aspects of History

Reds: A Global History of Communism, by Paul Mason

Α compelling account of an idea that has survived its political failures tracing communism from Plato and Thomas More through revolution, authoritarianism and the rise of contemporary China while asking what lessons its past holds for the present.

Daria Santini

In the epigraph to his previous book, How to Stop Fascism (2021), Paul Mason recalls the anti-fascist lawyer and political scientist Karl Loewenstein's observation that "history teaches us the deathlessness of ideas". The quotation encapsulates a view of history...

Reds: A Global History of Communism – A Conversation with Paul Mason

The historian examines with Daria Santini the deep historical roots of communism, the push and pull between Utopian ideals and authoritarianism, and the continued relevance of past communist movements in an era of Chinese ascendancy and debate over alternatives to capitalism.

Paul Mason

Welcome, Paul, to Aspects of History. Why did you choose to begin Reds: A Global History of Communism in antiquity rather than with Marx, Engels, or the Russian revolution? What do we miss when we treat communism as a purely modern phenomenon? Because before it was a...

Rethinking Communism’s History

Karl Marx was never the original architect of the communist tradition, which traces deeper roots from French revolutionary thought and the utopian ideals of Babeuf and Blanqui.

Paul Mason

There is, in the origin story of communism, something akin to what happens the first lines of the Book of Genesis. Left-wing politics in the 1830s are like the biblical “formless void”, with the early workers’ movement mesmerised by pointless speculative Utopias. Then...

Conquest: A History of Roman Britain, by Ferdinand Addis

A reappraisal of a much-researched topic reveals how diplomacy, trade and cultural exchange were and still are as fundamental to Rome’s conquest of these islands, our landscape and British identity today as military force.

Zeb Baker-Smith

There is a lot that has been said, written and mulled over when it comes to Roman Britain, and, consequently, a reader glimpsing Ferdinand Addis’ Conquest on the shelves might be forgiven for thinking it another interpretation of those well-trodden stories and a...

Caesar’s Gaulish King: The Double Lives of Commius the Atrebatan

The stirring career of a one-time trusted ally, sometimes determined enemy, of Caesar reveals the complexities of loyalty and political manoeuvring in operation behind Rome’s invasions of Britain and Gaul.

Ferdinand Addis

55BC, as Sellar and Yeatman knew, is “the first date in English history”. Caesar led his legions across the sea and gave the Britons a thrashing. This, of course, was “a Good Thing, since the Britons were only natives at that time.” Caesar could hardly have put it any...

Stealing Hitler’s Rocket: The Incredible Mission to Smuggle a V-2 Rocket Out of Nazi-Occupied Europe to Britain, by Guy Walters

In 1943 Allied reconnaissance identified a major military development site on the Baltic coast, and so began a complex and hazardous smuggling mission of supersonic weaponry.

Trevor James

This is a very engaging book, written in a very accessible style, and this remarkable book does far more than its title suggests. From a personal perspective, having been born in 1946 in Croydon, I grew up acutely conscious of the ‘presence’ of multiple bomb sites....

Episode 271

A Rocket in the Marshes

In 1944, the Polish resistance managed to recover parts of Hitler’s secret V-2 rockets and passed vital intelligence to Britain, the operation becoming one of the most remarkable, yet overlooked, intelligence successes of the war.

Guy Walters

In a lonely corner of eastern Poland, not far from the River Bug, there is a stretch of countryside that looks entirely unremarkable. The villages are small and sleepy, the roads narrow and uneven, the fields flat and windswept. When I visited last November, a cold...

Building Britannia: A History of Britain in 25 Buildings, by Steven Parissien

British history is traced through 25 iconic buildings – from Maiden Castle to 30 St Mary Axe – in this blend of architectural perusal and cultural insight.

Paul Strathern

Dr. Steven Parissien’s latest retelling of history through architecture, Building Britannia: A History of Britain in Twenty-Five Buildings, begins with Maiden Castle in Dorset, which dates from around 600 BC. In the words of John Cooper Powys, this resembles ‘the...

Building Britannia: A Conversation with Steven Parissien

The historian explains his use of architecture and landmarks in telling the story of Britain’s social and political history to author Paul Strathern.

Steven Parissien

Welcome, Steven, to Aspects of History. What was it that first led you into the study of architecture and cultural history? Which came first? I was always fascinated by British history and British architecture from my earliest years, though I’m not sure why: no-one in...