At a bend in the river Dnipro, where a stream flows in from the west and the ferries made their crossing, a fortress shone on a hilltop high above a busy trading town: The Vikings called … Read the article
We teamed up with the Unknown History podcast on Quick and Dirty Tips to bring you their latest series based on Giles Milton’s Checkmate in Berlin. Episode 9 discusses the Soviet siege of Berlin, which started with a series of rather smaller … Read the article
Quick, think of a poison…
There’s a good chance that you came up with arsenic. Arsenic was first isolated by the famous alchemist Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth-century city of Cologne. By a strange coincidence, Cologne was named … Read the article
We teamed up with the Unknown History podcast on Quick and Dirty Tips to bring you their latest series based on Giles Milton’s Checkmate in Berlin. Episode 8 discusses General Alexander Kotikov, a person Western allies in post-war Berlin had … Read the article
As complex in their own way as their Mitford cousins, Winston and Clementine Churchill’s daughters each had a unique relationship with their famous father. Rachel Trethewey’s biography, The Churchill Sisters, tells their story. Read on for an excerpt.… Read the article
We teamed up with the Unknown History podcast on Quick and Dirty Tips to bring you their latest series based on Giles Milton’s Checkmate in Berlin. Episode 7 discusses Winston Churchill’s seminal 1946 speech in Westminster College, which gave not … Read the article
We teamed up with the Unknown History podcast on Quick and Dirty Tips to bring you their latest series based on Giles Milton’s Checkmate in Berlin. Episode 6 discusses the power struggle in the Allied Kommandatura, the four-power body established to … Read the article
While the holidays are primarily a time to reconnect with family and friends, there is nothing better during these cold months than curling up by the fire and reading a book you can’t put down. As … Read the article
Winston Churchill dreamed of establishing a political dynasty that passed from father to son, but as I researched his daughters’ lives, I realized that any one of the women would have made better politicians than their brother … Read the article
On the morning of December 3rd, 1926, Agatha Christie’s husband announced he wanted a divorce for the most heart-shattering of reasons: he planned to marry his mistress. Late that night, the thirty-six-year-old author’s Morris Cowley was … Read the article