Only Dickens, or perhaps Anthony Trollope, could have invented the name Asquith for one of their novels. It is a respectable surname, but certainly rather odd. Our subject…
Author: Dean Swift
‘Dean Swift’ is a pen name: the author has been a soldier; he has worked in sales, TV, the making of films, as a teacher of English and history and a journalist. He is married with three grown-up children. They live in Spain.
What was the ‘Wild West’?
It was a term used, mainly by Americans, to describe frontier society in the second half of the nineteenth century. Before the eighteen fifties the huge area between…
Nicolas I of Russia
This younger brother of Alexander I was born in 1796, and became Tsar in 1825 at nearly thirty years old. Any chance that there might have been to…
The English Pope
Strictly speaking, our title should be ‘The only English Pope’, since that is the case. There were several other leaders of the Roman Catholic church called Adrian, and…
War at sea (part III)
The sail and massive oars had been the chief propelling medium for centuries when during the middle part of the nineteenth century, steam power first used by railway…
War at sea: (part II)
Spain’s royal champion don Juan of Austria was commander of the Christian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto (1571). This was a battle of galleys, luxuriously illustrated by…
War at sea:part I
Historians are convinced that navies, squadrons of fighting ships, were first developed by the ancient Greeks and they are probably right. In the seventh century B.C. The Greeks…
Sir Robert Peel, ‘Peelites’ and ‘Peelers’
He was a Lancashireman, son of a rich industrialist. Born in the eighteenth century (1778) he got into Parliament as a Tory at twenty-one years of age. By…
The Campaign in Normandy, June & August, 1944
This was the real turning point in the Second World War, although it came much later than it should have done, due mainly to inappropriate weather conditions for…
Oregon: boundary dispute & the Trail
Between 1843 and 1846 the vast Oregon territory in the United States of America became a subject for dispute between Britain and the States, despite the fact that…