The battle of Caporetto
A scene from the withdrawal / litestraboen.blogspot.com Not everybody realises that in the First World War Italy fought on the Allied side. In the second ‘war to end all wars’ Italians were persuaded [...]
The father of Winston
Lord Randolph / brooklyneagle.com Lord Randolph H.S. Churchill was born in 1849, the third son of the then Duke of Marlborough. In character more similar to his grandson Randolph than his son Winston, [...]
Another figure from the French Revolution: Danton
/ mundodescargas.com Georges-Jacques Danton was another of those middle-class Frenchmen, trained as a lawyer like Robespierre, who flourished in what we are supposed to believe was a rising of the masses against regal [...]
The Ashanti Wars (also ‘Asante’ & Asanti’)
In the middle of a battle / planetdiecast.com Much of the 19th century in Africa was spent in wars between the Ashanti and an enemy tribe, the Fante, and the British, who made [...]
The Battle of the Atlantic (1939 – 45)
Canadian Navy warship on the high seas / navyforces.gc.ca Lasting in effect the whole of the 2nd World War, this was a bloody struggle between the Allies and the German Navy and included [...]
French Revolution (amended)
When Louis XVI was enthroned in 1774, the currents of European favour were running fresh and strong for ‘enlightened despotism’. France had nearly three times the population of England, great agricultural resources, an upwardly mobile [...]
A Pair of Pious Popes (amended)
Pius XI / reformation.org Pius XI was born in 1857 and was Pope from 1922 for eighteen years, during which he inadvertently caused the collapse of the Catholic Popular Party. He did not [...]
Hyde Park on the Hudson: all topsy-turvy
First meeting / data.newsday.com Kind friends at Amazon sent me the DVD of a newish British film which originally had a load of promise. Last year we first heard about the idea of [...]
The dashing Prince Rupert (amended)
Prince Rupert of the Rhine / ntprints.com He might have been invented by Daphne du Maurier or Rafael Sabatini. He was outlandishly handsome and a lover of women; he was an aristocrat of [...]
The Mexican-American War
In 1845 the United States, in a fit of muscular expansionism, annexed the Mexican state of Texas which caused hostilities between the two countries, and a fair amount of confusion among the Texans. Not content [...]
The Empress Matilda a.k.a. Maud
Matilda (or Maud) / simple.wikipedia.org Even the best examinees in the History papers can become mixed up because of Empress Matilda. She was the English princess, daughter of Henry I, his only legitimate [...]
The Merchant Adventurers
This early fifteenth century name was coined to cover English merchants engaged in the export/import trade. The first of these was made official in 1407. After this, internationally-based English companies flourished throughout the fifteenth and [...]
State theft or The Dissolution of the Monasteries
Rievaulx – ‘one of the ruins that Thomas Cromwell knocked about a bit’ / walkingenglishman.com In civilized society there is a multitude of ways used by ‘the authorities’ to extract money from citizens [...]
The Middle Ages
Historians disagree about exact dates, but I believe it is generally accepted that the phrase ‘Middle Ages’ denotes the period in Europe from around 700 A.D. to around 1500. Before 700 were ‘The Dark Ages’ [...]
The first Hanoverian King of Great Britain
The British King who spoke no English / gameo.org The Hanoverian dynasty got its name from the city of Hanover, capital of Lower Saxony in Germany. In 1658 the grand-daughter of [...]
The German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
In a recent post I put the word ‘democratic’ in this title between inverted commas, and a student has asked me why. Did I doubt, I was asked, that the GDR was democratic? Well yes [...]
Berlin: City, Congress, Airlift & Wall
Berlin was the capital of Germany from 1871, though it was also the capital of Prussia. When the capital moved from Bonn after the Second War, Berlin became again the capital and hub of Germany, [...]
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