It is difficult to find any time since the Byzantine Empire when the North African coast from Morocco to Libya was not infamous for piracy. The worst period…
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 Visconti
One of the historic Italian families, lords of Milan and Lombardy from the second half of the thirteenth century. The Visconti family was without any doubt the most…
Two unfortunate (royal) children
It was difficult enough merely to survive childhood in earlier times, with nearly certain death in childbirth or later in infancy – through lack of hygiene, lack of…
Appeasement
A bit of a dirty word since 1938 but it shouldn’t be. There is enough appeasement going on now over the disgusting situation in Syria to fill the…
Dorothy Parker: some things worth remembering . . .
She was born Dorothy Rothschild (nothing to do with the bankers) in 1893 and died just over seventy in 1967. She was American, one of the founders of…
The Normans & the Norman Invasion of England
Normans were and are inhabitants of Normandy, a picturesque western coastal part of France. They are of mixed descendence, much of their blood being of Scandinavian or Viking…
Nihilism & Nihilists
These two words, plus nihilistic, are come across by history students frequently; they may know what the words means, or perhaps not. Imagine a child not yet in…
The Battles of Copenhagen
When the history student thinks of Denmark, he will not think of that Scandinavian country as a bristling enemy of Britain, except possibly during Denmark (and Norway’s) Viking…
Revolution in Mexico (1910 – 1949)
During Porfirio Diaz’ rule, power in Mexico was pre-eminent among the elite – landowners, bankers, captains of industry etc. Urban and agricultural workers, the growing middle classes and…
Poor Laws in Britain, and ‘Speenhamland’
The Poor Law provided during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I at the very end of the sixteenth century was still in force at the very beginning of…