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Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (1881-1959) Halifax ‘Fulness of Days’ These memoirs lived down to my expectations....

This biography of Lady Victoria Sackville (Vita Sackville's mother) is well worth reading. She said that her life was like a novel - it...

(First published in ‘F ighting Times’ ) Winston Churchill in 1911. It can be dangerous letting loose a biographer on a man like Winston...

This article first appeared on the History Press website. Churchill with Admiral of the Fleet John Fisher outside the Admiralty in 1915....

Few decisive battles have been so indecisive in their early stages. Fewer still have turned on a bare five minutes. Even fewer battles...

When Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher announced his resignation as First Sea Lord in November 1909 the Navy lost its greatest ever...

This article first appeared in Soldiers of the Queen (Winter 2021) For a period of around 40 years, from 1871 to 1914, British booklovers...

I found this in Oxfam. I see from the end of the book that Jenny Lee wrote it after people had claimed that there was something wrong...

Harold Laski 1892-1950 This book is a most interesting biographical memoir of Harold Laski. The author, Kingsley Martin, knew Laski well...

This article first appeared in Soldiers of the Queen in 2021. The determination to scare For a period of around forty years from 1871 to...

Newnhame College, Cambridge. This is a book, published for the centenary of the founding of Newnham College, comprises items written by...

(Blog piece for History Today . Jan 2013.) In December 1941 most Americans refused to believe that the Japanese would mount a surprise...

For many of us the Battle of Midway is just one more Hollywood spectacular in, to paraphrase Neville Chamberlain, a far-away sea of which...

(This review was first published in Fighting Times .) The Glorious First of June, 1 June 1794. Every researcher knows the excitement of...

Roosevelt and Churchill on USS Augusta where they agreed the text of the Atlantic Charter. I first read this book more than ten years ago...

Colville ‘The Fringes of Power’ Vol 1 (Sir John Rupert Colville was 24 years old when he was seconded from the Foreign Office to the post...

The birth of a diary ‘Ike says I’m to keep a diary.' With these words Captain Harry C Butcher, USNR, begins a diary like no other. He had...

An earlier version of this article appeared in Victorian Military History 2014. Jutland 1916 At 7.17 pm on 31 May 1916 Admiral Reinhard...

This is the text of my contribution to a 'Greatest Hero' event at the National Maritime Museum on 17 October. 2011. Patrick Bishop argued...

Review of H C Butcher ‘Three Years With Eisenhower’ ( Heinemann 1946). An accidental diarist ‘Ike says I’m to keep a diary.’ With these...