Further thoughts on the Ardennes Offensive
US soldiers fighting in typical Ardennes winter weather /warfarehistorynetwork.com Shakespeare has generals dancing together in a suitably stately manner, on board ships in his play Antony and Cleopatra. The Battle of the Bulge, [...]
Alsace/Lorraine & Schleswig/Holstein
These two tongue-twisters used not only to twist tongues, but eject furious spittle from the pursed mouth of European statesmen and politicians. The problem is not only of dual nationality and two different languages, but [...]
Queen Elizabeth I (the ‘Virgin Queen’)
The queen in ‘the Armada Portrait’, note the right hand resting comfortably on the globe /en.wikipedia.org The only half-decent member of the infamous Tudor dynasty was Elizabeth, born in 1533. She was the [...]
The importance of being Okinawa
Yamato goes to war! / tamiya.com In April, 1945, the 2nd World War was very far from over. A huge invasion of the French mainland was planned for June. Japan, however, was seen [...]
The ‘White Terror’
Jean Cottereau, leader of the ‘Chouans’ / en wikipedia.org It is a common misconception that the French Revolution (q.v.), the ‘Terror’ and the fall of Robespierre and other leading Jacobins, led immediately to [...]
The dry martini cocktail
The green olive properly speared / noilly prat.com The history of this cocktail is not without incident. It is a potentially lethal mixture of a raw spirit – gin – with a distillation [...]
A seventeenth century diarist – Samuel Pepys
/ en.wikipedia.org History too is re-cycled, like glass, water, paper and other essenials. A history book is nothing more than a re-thinking, in some cases revising as well, of what an earlier historian [...]
Some ineffectual prime ministers
Britain has had some seventy-five prime ministers since the year 1721. Many in the earlier days came from the higher aristocracy, were landed and naturally unpaid. Many, but by no means all, had been to [...]
Further thoughts on John of Gaunt & his son Henry Bolingbroke
The old Palace of the Savoy / freegaes.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com In early February, 1399, John of Gaunt died in Leicester. He was fifty-eight years old – not a bad age-scale for the fourteenth century. His [...]
Further thoughts on Edward I of England
Artist’s impression of King Edward / genial.net On the afternoon of 7th July, 1307, the Plantagenet king of England Edward I died on his way north with a huge army. His intention had [...]
An infamous trio, Darnley, Bothwell & Rizzio
These three sixteenth century men had a lot in common, though the first had royal blood, the second noble blood, and the third was a foreign commoner. What they had in common was Mary Queen [...]
Further thoughts on John I
Angry John signs while elderly Marshal supervises / britishromanticism.wikispaces King John has the worst reputation of any English king, and there is plenty of competition. He was a crooked legislator, greedy, consumed with [...]
The father of Winston
Lord Randolph Churchill /lifedaily.com Few people have any other mind’s eye image of Winston Churchill than that of a very old man, with a big cigar and perhaps an even bigger ego. [...]
Regicides, family murders & mysteries
The regicide of King Charles I / lookandlearn.com Regicide, or the killing of a reigning monarch by his own people has always been believed (though not by republicans) to be among the worst [...]
More thoughts on that Yalta Conference
The ‘Big Three’ from l. to r. ‘Exhausted’, ‘Dying’, and ‘Exuberant’ / spartacus.educational.com In February, 1945, the second ‘Big Three’ conference took place at Yalta in the Crimea. The first had been in [...]
What was the ‘White Australia Policy’?
William Hughes with some fellow White Australians / smh.com.au Towards the end of the Victorian era, when neither statesmen or dustmen had yet heard of political correctitude, Australia began the unenviable task of [...]
The Dominions, and the Statute of Westminster
A part of New Zealand / airnewzealand.ar.com Readers become confused by the essential differences between dominions and colonies and protectorates. The British Empire, when it existed, embraced all three. ‘Dominions’ was the name [...]
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