Statistics tell us we seem to have the good fortune to be read by a respectable number of thousands of history students every month. We say Happy and…
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.
General Templer & the Malayan Emergency
Gerald Templer, a boy destined for military honours if ever there was one, was born in 1898. After joining up as a boy soldier he rose rapidly through…
The sea battle of Trafalgar
There is a running fight, not unlike the battle of Trafalgar itself, between Spanish, British and French historians, which has continued without pause since 1805. Friendships which should…
Special Note to followers of General-History
From today we shall take a short break, for travel, research and the Christmas holidays. Apart from the occasional Humour or ‘Quis?’ posts which will appear during the…
Humour on Tuesday
Here is a little story that some might find a bit racist, but these jokes are or are not racist according to one’s nationality. I like this joke…
Historians Polybius, Sallust, Seneca, Suetonius & Tacitus
POLYBIUS (204 – 122 BC) had the good luck (from the intellectual point of view) to be a historian during the rise of Rome after the 2nd Punic…
The end of the British Empire and imperialism
It is barely seventy-two years since a quarter of the human race lived, toiled, danced and finally died under the Union Jack. It is a very short…
Reginald Pole (easy dates 1500 – 1558)
Please note that this important character from history had the plain surname of Pole. His name is not De la Pole – quite a different family*. Our subject…
Frederick (the Great) of Prussia
He was born in 1740, the son of Frederick William I and his queen, Sophia Dorothea, a daughter of George I of Great Britain. As a boy he…
The Pizarro brothers and Perú
Francisco Pizarro was born in 1475 in Extremadura in western Spain, when that country was even more powerful than France. He became a conquistador and an important explorer….