This Atlantic, south-western European country is on the western side of the Iberian Peninsula, bounded to north and east by Spain and to the west and south by…
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.
Chinese dynasties in antiquity
Civilization in Europe is an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes compared with China’s. The Shang dynasty, for instance, began 1766 years before Christ, according to reliable records, and…
War in the air Part III: the Pacific
The carrier-based Japanese air force began the war in the air over the Pacific Ocean by attacking without prior warning the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. The…
War in the air Part II: Per Ardua Ad Astra
The Blizkrieg from Nazi Germany that opened the Second War in 1939 showed that apart from tank power, air power was a vital component of…
War in the air: part I; the early days
In the very late nineteenth century hot-air balloons were first used in Europe for observing enemy troop movements. War in the air had started. Later the same balloons…
Four illustrious Cecils
William Cecil was the first illustrious Cecil, men from an ordinary background who managed, by determination, hard work, guile, ambition and not a little luck to reach very…
NEWS of the books
General History in book format! Don’t forget Volumes One & Two of GENERAL HISTORY are available on Amazon wherever you may be. These books are simply the articles…
The USSR and its leaders
This article deals with the former Soviet Union, a.k.a. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR was a federation of fifteen republics, forming what was the world’s largest…
Conversos (the converted)
Jews in the Spain of the Middle Ages, though never popular, were permitted to convert from Judaism to Christianity; rigorous tests conducted by priests followed equally stern…
The Boston Massacre, Tea Party & the Intolerable Acts
By March, 1770 a strong sense of resentment and general feelings of unrest among American colonists, who came mainly from Britain but were intermixed with many citizens from…