The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
CHF 2024: Day 2 The first two mornings of the festival are given over to the excellent schools’ programme. Busloads of youngsters descend on the site and get a special programme of talks and tours. The accompanying teachers all report game changing levels of new...
CHF 2024: Day 1 The festival site looked resplendent in the dappled June light, bouts of sunshine alternating with welcome cloud cover and a gentle breeze. Regular visitors will notice some changes to the layout. The Evelyn Partners tent has moved and is now a giant...
On the day Britain declared war on Germany, 3 September 1939, Parliament immediately passed The National Service (Armed Forces) Act. All men aged between 18 and 41 were required to register for service. My grandfather John James Doherty ‘JJ’, a talented linguist,...
A couple of years ago at the Chalke History Festival, General Sir Simon Mayall, a popular member of the red trouser brigade, Balliol man, and retired military top brass strode onto stage to rapturous applause. Introducing his recently published memoirs he delivered a...
CVHF 2023: Day 3 The V-Bombers - Norman Bonner & Ed Jarron with James Holland Britain And The Nuclear Threat - Julie McDowall The Pacific War 1941-45 - Saul David & Michael Neiberg The Wolf-Girl, The Greeks And The Gods: A Tale Of The Persian Wars - Tom...
CVHF 2023: Day 2 The Blazing World: A New History Of Revolutionary England - Jonathan Healey Revolutionary Spring: Fighting For A New World 1848 – 1849 - Christopher Clark With Tom Holland Living In The Third Reich - Julia Boyd & Martin Davidson Middling sorts...
CVHF 2023: Day 1 Ashes Heroes - Mike Brearley, Gideon Haigh, Simon Hughes The Ship beneath the Ice, The Discovery of Shackleton’s Endurance – Mensun Bound How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks – Adam Nicolson Bazball This year’s opener was a crowd-pleaser, the...
The Chalke Valley History Festival has been running since 2011. How has the festival evolved over the years? The festival began in June 2011 on a small scale and as a fundraiser for the local cricket club. I think the first year we had just 12 talks across one...
Rory Clements, the crash which killed the Duke of Kent in 1942 was a tragic event, with only one survivor, how did you come across it and why did you write the story? I have known about the crash for many years, but I was aware that most people had no idea that the...
What The Greeks Did For Us, by Tony Spawforth. Any academic standing up for Classics (Latin and Greek, no definite article) in 2023 does so knowingly entering a minefield of epic proportions. Since the Renaissance the appreciation of Classics has been a mark of...
