Men who renounced a worldly life in order to enter a monastery were many in medieval times. They are few and far between now, but the three most…
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 Battle of Cannae
This was not just an armed, bloody struggle between fighting men. It was one of the classic victories in military history. Carthage’s general Hannibal (q.v.) faced a Roman…
King Canute, Knut or Cnut
Canute was King of England, Denmark and Norway. There are various distinct ways of spelling his name, but he will always stay in the memory because of something…
The Fuggers
Now before the bloodhounds of Google get hot about the collar and assume I am using a form of Anglo-Saxon four-letter-word in the plural, give me time to…
The Intelligence Services
Where dictators or democratically elected governments rule, they need organisations dedicated to the gathering and evaluation of information, mainly concerning the intentions of other states that may not…
All-time mysteries: Roanoke Island & the Marie Celeste
In Albemarle Sound off the northern coast of North Carolina there is an island which was the first English colony in North America. This is Roanoke, where a…
Dr. Beeching & the British railways (1960s)
One of the greatest achievements of the Victorians took place in the home country, not abroad somewhere in the over-large Empire. A railway network second to none, not…
The real Macbeth
Macbeth is the shortest of Shakespeare’s plays and probably the work most associated with that playwright’s well-known sense of imagery. His vivid imagination is also shown hard at…
Child Stars & what happened to some of them
Since cinema started small children with the talent (and courage) to act in front of a camera team have been popular with cinemagoers. In the Twenties Mary Pickford…