Before the 5th century, Ireland was virtually unknown, except as a wilderness island too far away and consequently a dangerous target for ambitious figures during the last years…
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.
Boyars and Kulaks
Two words which appear regularly in fiction and essays concerning Russia are Boyar and Kulak. They invariably appear with pejorative intention: “Don’t let that bunch of kulaks anywhere…
Strategic bombing offensive: the science of massed air attacks
Crudely developed during the later stages of World War II, the SBO was a series of mass attacks from the air on both military and civilian targets. The…
The battle for Stalingrad (August ’42 – February ’43)
Volgograd was a city that stretched for eighteen miles along the banks of the river Volga in deepest Russia. The oilfields of the Caucasus were near, and the…
The liberators of Spanish South America
The end of the great Spanish Empire was to a great extent aided by two officers, one Spanish himself, the other a Creole from Venezuela. Both achieved huge…
Fortified Homes: the castle
“An Englishman’s home is his castle” as the old saying has it, and the phrase implies a multitude of meanings. Castles were defendable fortified buildings, increasingly strong as…
Commerce in History: the slave trade
Thinking people still get hot under the collar when the subject of the trade in slaves looms. But then, more nonsense is spoken about the slave trade by…
1936: The Remilitarization of the Rhineland
The ill-prepared and unfortunate Treaty of Versailles (q.v.) had left the left bank of the Rhine plus an area 50 kilometres deep on its right bank permanently demilitarized…
A child’s guide to the Greek philosophers
I suppose that the Peloponnesian War (q.v.) was, shamefully, the downfall of the ancient Greek Empire. War had penetrated men’s minds and they did bad things. With Pericles…
The Battle of Kursk
This was the last and perhaps least written-about offensive on the Eastern front. It was July, 1943, and perhaps the greatest tank battle in history was about to…