France, Belgium, Poland & Central Italy: The July Revolution in France expelled Charles X and replaced him as King with Louis-Philippe. The Austrian Netherlands belonging to Belgium were…
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.
Some notes on the 2000 Scarlet Pimpernel series
Some notes on the 2000 TV series ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ I have in my possession a box set of this production, the material contained in four DVD discs….
Who were the ‘Sans-Culottes’?
The fashion for both men and women to wear trousers ending at the knee, or just below it, has been with us for five years or more. Some…
Friedrich W. Nietzsche
With a name tricky both to spell and to pronounce, this German philosopher was born in 1844, son of a sheep herder in Saxony. He was brought up…
What was the ‘Mir’
It was a commune of 19th century Russian peasants, dominating almost every aspect of rural life in that vast country. It is not generally known that the commune…
Field Marshal Montgomery (‘Monty’)
In practice, the nickname or epithet ‘Monty’ was not used when addressing Bernard Law Montgomery, except possibly by the few other soldiers senior to him in rank, and…
The importance of Burgos and the Spanish Democracy
Burgos is one of the principal cities in Spain, it has a large population, a famous cathedral, biting arctic winds that freeze one to the marrow and, at…
(Thomas) Woodrow Wilson
The twenty-seventh President of the United States was born in 1856 in Virginia, son of a Presbyterian minister. The family were slave-owners. Thirty-four years later Woodrow was made…
Guess who said (or wrote) these things?
Give us your answers in the form of a Comment “I must have a drink of breakfast.” “Somebody left the cork out of my lunch!” “She’s all…
Union general William T Sherman
This successful but invariably severe soldier with a Native American middle name – Tecumseh – was born in 1820, went into the Army in his teens, and rose…