The ‘Great Trek’ was the massed movement of Boer (Dutch/Africans) farmers to the north out of the Cape Colony into the Orange Free State, Natal and Transvaal…
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 Kaiser (Wilhelm II of Germany)
The future King of Prussia and German Emperor was born in 1859, the eldest son of the then Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia (he later became Emperor…
The second Spanish Republic
Political philosophies in the Latin country of Spain are so aggressive that journalists who have an opinion, or dare to have an opinion about politics that…
A brief history of spectator sports
Most (but not all) of the sports which are super-popular with the public today were invented, improved and regulated in the independent private schools of Victorian Britain;…
The Seven Years War
Most of the eighteenth century featured wars in Europe, as rulers came and went and tried to dominate other rulers. Nearly always the same countries were…
John of Gaunt
The man who would be king – though not of England John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster was a son of an English king. He was the father…
The time when there were THREE Popes
At this very moment the cardinals gathered in the Vatican are arguing about who shall be the next Pope, following Benedict XVI’s resignation on grounds of health….
The curse of the ‘Devil’s Horsemen’
It is said that in the early part of the thirteenth century, English fish dealers working on the long eastern coast at places like Grimsby and Yarmouth were…
Edward I: devious, eloquent, wily, courageous, untrustworthy – great
A contemporary historian who knew him said Edward I of England was very tall, with long neck, arms and legs, and gave him the nickname ‘Longshanks’. It…