The most expensive organisation on this planet started life in October 1945. Its predecessor the League of Nations had proved to be useless, and the founder nations 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.
What was the ‘Risorgimento’?
The word means ‘resurgence’ but that will not mean much to students. It was a nineteenth century movement designed to unite Italy, which had not been united since…
The Valois of France
The Valois of France France was ruled by the Valois Dynasty from the accession of Philip VI (Count of Valois, 1328) to the death of Henry III in…
Reformation in England and the Dissolution of the Monasteries
The Reformation in England was the process by which the English Church rejected the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and established a Litany and Doctrine of its…
Nicolae Ceausescu
This Romanian politician was born in the last year of the Great War. His was a poor family working mostly on the land, and young Nicolae was pleased…
The Treaty of Trianon (1920) and its effect on Hungary
This treaty is another good example of the collateral damage to be expected when states join in wars with the express intention of gaining territory, though the war…
The struggle for independence: Rhodesia
It would seem clear that Cataluña will, by one means or another, free herself from Spain, of which she has always been an integral part. All the signs…
Stephen, the last Norman King of England
Stephen was born in or around 1097; anyway it is safe to assume his birth took place at the end of the 11th century. His mother was Adela,…
‘Stadhouder’: what was a ‘stadholder’?
The names in Dutch and English are similar; this was the office of the chief executive of the Dutch Republic when Holland was a republic and not, as…
That Special Relationship
This is a favourite (or favorite term) used mainly by British social commentators and diplomats to describe what they like to see as special Anglo-American relations. The term…