The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Recent years have seen a welcome recognition of the many women who worked in top secret roles with the intelligence services, particularly during the Second World War. Helen Fry’s highly impressive new book on Women in Intelligence goes even further, describing how...
I was not completely sure, when asked to review this book, whether 300 pages or so on Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen would be my sort of thing. I am interested in Georgian and Regency History but that interest tends more towards the political and the...
The final months of England’s only republic, from 1658 to 1660, may be the most consequential yet least understood in its past. For a nation obsessed with the long history of its monarchy this is no coincidence. The Restoration of King Charles II in 1660 cast the...
Supremacy at Sea The Second World War can be seen as a succession of phases, or campaign events, each of which in terms of timeline and effect had its own impact on the course and outcome of the war. The two big turning points in the Second World War both occurred in...
Evan Mawdsley, by mid-44 in what state was the Imperial Japanese Navy? In May 1944, the commanders of the American Pacific Fleet thought that it was unlikely that the IJN would sortie from the Philippines to defend the Marianas Islands. This was due to their estimate...
When one looks at the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland under Oliver Cromwell in August 1658, would it have been fanciful to imagine a Republic for the foreseeable future, yet within two years the Stuarts were back on the throne? By August 1658, the...
Richard Cromwell had one of the strangest and saddest public lives in English history. An obscure country gentleman until he was 30, he then underwent a brief schooling in politics and government, before ruling as the second Protector for eight months. Vulnerable to...
When one thinks of D-Day, June 6th 1944, the first images that spring to mind are of brave soldiers disembarking landing craft and rushing onto the beaches to face the machine-guns of the defending Germans. Films, such as Saving Private Ryan and The Longest Day have...
Nick Hewitt, many congratulations on Normandy: The Sailor’s Story. Why did you want to write it? Thank you! I’ve been studying the naval history of D-Day and the wider Normandy campaign for most of my career, ever since I started working aboard HMS Belfast as a baby...
At a time when the UK is at war by proxy – providing intelligence, weapons and training to Ukraine – and relying on Article Five of the NATO treaty for our own security, this is a most timely book. The author, Sten Renning, is a Danish professor who has been a student...
