To avoid confusion, one remembers that there were two Frederick IIs, Frederick ‘The Great’, an eighteenth century monarch, and our subject in this article, Frederick ‘Stupor Mundi’ a…
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 first European Community (failed)
The EEC as we know it today bears no resemblance to this first attempt, but at least enough initiative was shown by its inventors to make it last…
Saturday Spoofs; early April Fool’s Day biographies
Pilloch, N.G., Baron Pilloch of Bedwetty was born one day during the Second World War. He became a Socialist after losing his temper with a nanny who possesed…
The Viking Longship
The Vikings (q.v.) were seafarers, leaving the majestic beauty of their fjords to navigate the freezing waters of the North Sea to assault the northern coasts of Britain…
Proletarian colloquial expressions in English
Like all languages, the English of the lower orders is filled with expressions, usually of surprise at events. Most first appeared in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, but…
Ludovico, the most significant member of the Sforza family
The Sforzas were an Italian family prominent in the 15th and 16th centuries. They stem from one Muzio Attendolo (1369 – 1424), a forceful condottiere of the period,…
The Stuart Dynasty
Stuart, originally Stewart, is the family name of Scottish kings and queens from nearly the end of the fourteenth century until 1714 – English monarchs as well…
Sturdy Beggars
In the so-called ‘developed’ societies since the end of the Second World War many children are brought up by unthinking parents to believe that work is something…
Whoops! Ricardo de la Cierva can make mistakes too . . .
De la Cierva is a historian and politician and the writer of many works of history. He was born in 1926 and at the time of writing…
Three de Medicis
Catherine de Medici was Queen of France despite her distinguished Italian name. She was born in 1519 and became the wife of Henry II of France in one…