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Lady De Lancey: the abridged story of Waterloo
Knowing that many of my friends are desirous to have an account of the distressing scenes I have passed through, and finding the subject too painful to be renewed by writing frequently on these scenes,...
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The grim reality of Birmingham's industrialisation
The recent BBC series Peaky Blinders propelled the grime, violence and criminal activity of Birmingham during the early twentieth century to an avid television audience. With its vivid characters...
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Simon Watt at Cheltenham Science Festival (Parabola Arts Centre) on 06/06/15
Simon Watt will be at the Cheltenham Science Festival (Parabola Arts Centre) on Saturday 6th June from 10:15am - 11:15am. He will be talking about his book, The Ugly Animals: We Can't All be Pandas....
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The Friday Digest 05/06/15
This week's update features the drivers of the 1980s, secrets to a lasting romance and the illicit trade in antiquities. * A lesson of Waterloo. * Napoleon in pieces: the emperor's life in Lego. *...
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CSM Stanley Hollis VC: D-Day Hero
Middlesbrough-born Stanley Hollis, the only man to win a VC on D-day, should have been the most famous soldier of World War Two – but his natural modesty got in the way! The superb soldier and leader...
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D-Day: the first seventy-two hours
In the early hours of 6 June 1944, 20,000 British and American airborne soldiers descended by parachute and glider in the areas of Ranville and St Mère Église in Normandy. Employing 1,200 transport...
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Double Agent Garbo and the Success of Operation Fortitude
Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Hesketh was a member of General Eisenhower’s deception unit, Ops B, and was a key figure in Operation Fortitude, the great Allied deception carried out against the Germans to...
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Images of triumph, deceit and despair: propaganda and European stamp issues...
Stamps are printed in millions, and they reach every community. Today the pictures on them are usually commemorative, generally uncontroversial and rarely memorable. During the Second World War these...
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On the importance of anniversaries
We all have anniversaries. Not necessarily big ones (such as the First World War, which dominated last year and will be commemorated throughout its centenary, but we all have a birthday, or a work...
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Writing historical crime fiction
I have to admit, I never expected to be an historical crime writer. Back when I was 19 or 20 I had visions of writing books that would change the world and bring me the Nobel Prize for Literature. But...
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The Friday Digest 12/06/15
This week's update features aggressive cannibalism, the objects bringing the Battle of Waterloo to life and an investigation into Amazon. * Experience the battlefield at Waterloo with a game from the...
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Manchester Blitz 1940
2015 marks the 75th anniversary of the World War 2 Luftwaffe raids on Manchester, Salford, and Trafford Park. The attacks reached a climax just before Christmas 1940, when on two consecutive nights...
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Why we're celebrating Magna Carta
Back in 1215, Magna Carta was like many a new-born in the Middle Ages: the odds were stacked against its survival. It was a sickly baby with abusive parents. Those who’d conceived it - King John and...
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What did Magna Carta do for us ordinary folk?
The answer, strictly speaking, is - not a lot. Back in the early summer of 1215, England was ravaged by civil war. On one side, a group of rebel barons and their mini-armies, and on the other King...
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On the trail of Magna Carta
Back in 1215, Magna Carta, forced out of King John by the barons, was born amid bloodshed, betrayal and some dodgy business deals. But at its heart, the Great Charter appealed to human beings'...
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The Friday Digest 19/06/15
This week's update features the Magna Carta and Waterloo anniversaries, a history of the world in funny puns and how to knit your own Clanger. * Magna Carta: the competing forces that cry out for a...
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Does the history of the blues have something to tell us about the tragic...
Highway 61, known to those that make the journey south in search of the blues as the ‘blues highway’, never strays far from the banks of the great Mississippi River as it passes through towns and...
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Q&A with Kim Fleet
Kim Fleet is the latest author to join the Mystery Press group. We asked her about inspirations, avoiding cliché and the differences in writing the historical and the contemporary in a time slip...
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The Friday Digest 26/06/15
This week's update features unfinished art, a short history of Breton stripes and Marilyn Monroe as you have never seen her before. * The ten best fictional characters at Waterloo. * Peter and...
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A brief history of signet rings
Many people wear or own signet rings today. They are expressions of individuality and fashion statements, sometimes they are even family heirlooms. In fact the signet ring used to be an important...
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