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VE Day: the people's story
It is a cherished legend in my family, at least cherished by me, that on the night of VE Day my mother was brought home from the pub in a wheelbarrow. I was only six at the time (well, six and...
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The Friday Digest 08/05/15
This week's update features the sinking of RMS Lusitania, Napoleon's last journey and the pre-war cars found in a Texas barn. * RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sank in eighteen...
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Inside an election and the handover of No. 10
Normally kept well clear of the media and public, the Downing Street machine – the Private Office, Press Office and Garden Room Girls’ Secretariat – are always at work in the background. The...
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Waterloo: the Great War
I have been studying Waterloo, the final battle of the Great War, in great detail for some forty years. This opening statement will cause some bewilderment to many who have grown up with the...
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The birth of the Murder Squad
At the start of the millennium, seven crime writers banded together to form Murder Squad. The idea was born out of Margaret Murphy’s frustration with a lack of marketing and publicity for her novels,...
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The vaccine controversy and Dr Edward Jenner’s reputation
Lancet owned by Edward Jenner. Wellcome Library, London How does a medical innovation come to be accepted and adopted as a common practice? Historians of medicine have long-since recognised that the...
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Britain's political prisoners: conscientious objectors during the First World...
Henry Firth had been in prison for nine months when he was transferred to the Dartmoor Work Centre. As a conscientious objector who had agreed to do 'alternative service', he was set to work breaking...
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The Friday Digest 15/05/15
This week's update features witch bottles, men and women in Ancient Greek art and the birth of the crash helmet. * Friday 8 May marked the seventieth anniversary of VE Day and the end of war in...
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Terrence Finnegan at Recology, San Francisco on 13/06/15
Terrence Finnegan will be at the World War One Historical Association, Recology, San Francisco on Saturday, 13th June at 10:00 AM. He will be speaking about his book, A Delicate Affair on the...
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Cars we loved in the 1950s
The classic British sports car has its roots firmly planted in the 1950s. This was the decade when MGs, Triumphs, Austin-Healeys and Jaguars were the global yardsticks of open-topped, two-seater...
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Allied Aerial espionage over East Germany and Berlin, 1945-1990
30 September 2015 sees the twenty-fifth anniversary of the cessation of the clandestine aerial reconnaissance campaigns conducted by Britain, France and the United States (US) in the Berlin Air...
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Dunkirk 1940: how the untrained troops of the Labour Division were sacrificed...
Donald Q. Coster, an American volunteer ambulance driver captured by the Germans in the city of Amiens, was exhausted after a chaotic night at his makeshift hospital. Early that morning he was taken...
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A visit to CrimeFest 2015
First organised in June 2008, CrimeFest is a convention for people who like to read an occasional crime novel as well as for die-hard fanatics. It has not only become one of the biggest crime fiction...
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The Friday Digest 22/05/15
This week's update features extraordinary objects from the Battle of Waterloo, shrinking swimsuits and cyber archaeology. * The Battle of Waterloo, and not a single reporter in sight ... *...
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Making a drama out of a paranormal crisis
The evolution of supernatural drama out of paranormal reality is an unpredictable affair. Some cases give birth to fully formed entertainment almost immediately, while for others the gestation period...
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One hundred years of the Poppy
Photo: Mark Philpott IN FLANDERS FIELDS In Flanders' fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place: and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard...
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The Kalahari Killings: the true story of a wartime double murder in Botswana,...
In a conflict that claimed the lives of more than half a million young servicemen from every corner of the commonwealth, very few individual deaths in the Second World War merited worldwide media...
View ArticleThe impact of the Liberal reforms of the twentieth century on genealogy research
When doing any type of genealogy it is important to put your ancestors life’s into context for example by looking at the politics and social issues of the times. The first major changes in the...
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Lusitania remembered
The History Press author Chris Frame recently sailed aboard Cunard’s Queen Victoria as a keynote speaker during a very special anniversary for the RMS Lusitania. 7 May 2015 was a significant date in...
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The Friday Digest 29/05/15
This week's update features five hundred new fairytales, an unexploded 110lb Second World War bomb and eighteen charming British villages you must see before you die ... * Why is Elizabeth I, the...
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