Before a Norman Duke successfully invaded England, there had been in the Danish or Viking Line six kings including the last two, Edward the Confessor (started building Westminster…
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 Spartakus League
Spartacus (with a ‘c’) was a slave and gladiator from Thracia whom we know was crucified around 71 B.C. This intelligent and athletic man led a slaves’ revolt…
The International Brigade(s)
Volunteers from countries foreign to Spain rushed from around the world to aid the republican cause during the Spanish Civil War (1936 – 1938). Contrary to popular literature’s…
Coup de Shanghai
In 1927, Jiang Jieshi a.k.a. Chiang Kai-shek (q.v.) tried very hard to eliminate the Chinese Communist Party, which we will call the CCP. This is hard to understand…
Some more eccentricities of pronunciation
Some more eccentricities of pronunciation Spanish television announcers are lax when it comes to telling the viewers about the films they interminably show. Perhaps they do it on…
Who was Richard Sorge?
He was a German-born spy who served in the trenches during the Great War. Like many others who survived this hell on earth, he admired Communist efforts in…
The sailors rise at Kronstadt!
Russian sailors at Petrograd (which had been St. Petersburg) were among the first of their countrymen to become revolutionaries, when they set up their own soviet in 1905….
Alfred von Tirpitz
German admiral, Secretary of State for the Navy, philosopher, organiser and devoted enemy of Britain, Alfred was born in 1849 and lived to the age of eighty. All…
Pope Pius the Twelfth
Eugenio Pacelli was born in 1876, and was elected Pope in 1939. He came from a familyprominent for its loyal service to the Vatican. He was ordained priest…