Someone once said that there are only three really enjoyable parts of creating a book: the first royalty payment, the second royalty payment, and the third royalty payment, usually made on signature, manuscript delivery, and publication. Although … Read the article
In 1714, the gardener and caretaker Edmund Howard supervised his employer’s move to a new home. It was an exhausting endeavor, and anyone who has stared into an overfull cardboard box at four in the morning on … Read the article
Cecil Vandepeer Clarke viewed his caravan with the sort of affection that most men reserve for their wives. He polished it, tinkered with it and buffed up its cream paintwork with generous quantities of Richfield Auto Wax.… Read the article
‘MacNeill’ was Eoin MacNeill, the ostensible leader of the Irish Volunteers, a Gaelic scholar and professor at University College Dublin. Eoin MacNeill had envisaged the corps as having a purely defensive role. Coming into action only … Read the article
On 17 September 1944, the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group and the First Allied Airborne Army initiated Operation Market Garden. An audacious ground offensive augmented by the dropping of three Allied airborne divisions … Read the article
The initial British–Canadian–American Normandy landings (Operation Neptune, the first stage of Operation Overlord), aimed “to secure a lodgement on the continent from which further offensive operations can be developed”. Many … Read the article
When Harold Macmillan, now the Prime Minister, visited the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in February 1959, Guy Burgess told Harold Nicolson that he was ‘able to give advice at a suitable level’ and remembered how he … Read the article
It’s May 13, 1940. Winston Churchill has been prime minister of the United Kingdom for three days. This is his first speech to the House of Commons as the nation’s leader. It is also day four of … Read the article
Look at a map and remember the key position this area enjoyed from the 8th to the 13th centuries. From the beginning of the Viking Age in 793, the sea road connected these places we think … Read the article
As the sun set on another hot day, an easterly wind danced through the capital, weaving its way westward. From Islington, Samuel Pepys and his wife journeyed home after watching a new puppet show on Moorfields before … Read the article