The Khmer Rouge (and Pol Pot)
A great deal more is known about the Khmer Rouge than about Cambodia’s Pol Pot. To most history-subjected magazines Pol Pot was just another of those dictators who bumped off a few million of his [...]
The royal Portuguese House of Braganza
This traditional Iberian Duchy assumed royalty in 1442 but only when one of the interminable rows with neighbouring Spain impressed John IV enough to actually sit on the throne, thus founding the dynasty, was it [...]
The House of Bourbon (and Borbón)
The French (and later the Spanish) royal house descends from a Capet – Louis IX (The Saintly). As such it was absolutist and conformist in ideology, and dedicated to the extension of France in other [...]
Esquilache: attempts at reform in 18th century Spain
Leopoldo de Gregorio, Marqués de Esquilache was born around the beginning of the 18th century, perhaps 1700? He became that most difficult of objects – a Spanish politician – and was made Minister for War [...]
The tragedy of Lidice
Lidice was a Czechoslovak mining village not far from Prague. As a community it had no importance, but the Nazis needed to make an example of somewhere, following the assassination in May of Reinhardt Heydrich [...]
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph-Marie de Gaulle was born in 1890. His family was privileged and conservative, as can be denoted by the de in his name; also devoutly Roman Catholic. He was naturally educated at a [...]
Scotland’s many rulers
Only two Queens have been monarchs of Scotland, and one of them actually reigned as the official Queen of Scotland for twenty-five years before being betrayed by the Scots themselves and was finally beheaded by [...]
The great House of Savoy
The luxurious Savoy Hotel on the Embankment in London was constructed in the 19th century more or less where another famous house had stood until it was burnt down by a furious London mob. That [...]
Some of the historical mistakes in ‘Braveheart’ (1995)
Mel Gibson leading the clans I have been asked by a tolerable number of ‘fans’ if I could list the historical errors made by Mr Gibson in his odd film Braveheart. This is [...]
Benjamin Disraeli
Disraeli was born in 1804, one year before the battle of Trafalgar. He was a son of Jewish parents converted to Christianity. Certainly not the first or only writer who went gladly into politics, he [...]
The witch trials at Salem, Massachusetts, 1692
Witch-hunting, of one type or another, has always been a popular spectator sport. Gypsies, Jews, witches, Catholics, Recusant Catholics, Protestants, homosexuals – everybody has been through it during the centuries. What happened to ‘village scolds’ [...]
Salazar of Portugal
In 1889 Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was born into a devout smallholding family of peasant origins. Showing that he had a studious and attentive mind, he was accepted by a seminary where he was thoroughly [...]
The EIGHTY years war
There have been wars that lasted a few days; the Great War lasted a terrible four years, and the Second World War six. There was a thirty year war that nobody needed, except perhaps for [...]
Catalunya, the Revolt of Cataluña & the Count-Duke of Olivares
Catalonia (English spelling), Cataluña (Castilian spelling) and Catalunya (Catalán spelling) all refer to the same autonomous region, made up by the provinces of Barcelona, Gerona, Lérida and Tarragona (the last three in Spanish spelling). Catalonia [...]
Alexander II (killed) & Alexander III (survived) of Russia
Alexander II, the second son of Nicholas I was born in 1818. It is true but sad to say that the only significant reforms made in Russia in all the nineteenth century were carried out [...]
The defenestration of Prague
This is a difficult word to find in many otherwise excellent dictionaries; its source is the French word fenêtre meaning window. The act of defenestration means the throwing of an object, which might be a [...]
The Capet rulers of France
The Capet Dynasty dominated France for over three hundred years. The dates are 987 to 1328. Before them were the Carolingians, and it was one Hugh Capet who founded the best known royal dynasty apart [...]
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