Originally named Helvetia, this is a landlocked democratic European republic, with boundaries to the east with Liechtenstein and Austria, to the south with Italy; the west by France…
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.
The Khmer Rouge (and Pol Pot)
A great deal more is known about the Khmer Rouge than about Cambodia’s Pol Pot. To most history-subjected magazines Pol Pot was just another of those dictators who…
The royal Portuguese House of Braganza
This traditional Iberian Duchy assumed royalty in 1442 but only when one of the interminable rows with neighbouring Spain impressed John IV enough to actually sit on the…
The House of Bourbon (and Borbón)
The French (and later the Spanish) royal house descends from a Capet – Louis IX (The Saintly). As such it was absolutist and conformist in ideology, and dedicated…
Esquilache: attempts at reform in 18th century Spain
Leopoldo de Gregorio, Marqués de Esquilache was born around the beginning of the 18th century, perhaps 1700? He became that most difficult of objects – a Spanish politician…
The tragedy of Lidice
Lidice was a Czechoslovak mining village not far from Prague. As a community it had no importance, but the Nazis needed to make an example of somewhere, following…
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph-Marie de Gaulle was born in 1890. His family was privileged and conservative, as can be denoted by the de in his name; also devoutly Roman…
Scotland’s many rulers
Only two Queens have been monarchs of Scotland, and one of them actually reigned as the official Queen of Scotland for twenty-five years before being betrayed by the…
The great House of Savoy
The luxurious Savoy Hotel on the Embankment in London was constructed in the 19th century more or less where another famous house had stood until it was burnt…
Some of the historical mistakes in ‘Braveheart’ (1995)
I have been asked by a tolerable number of ‘fans’ if I could list the historical errors made by Mr Gibson in his odd film Braveheart. This is…