Given that it’s Easter time, the traditional beginning to the summer season in the U.K., it means that I’m once again able to enjoy the countless country gardens around and about. Many have seen our gardens on various TV shows and movies and they set the image of what people around the world imagine Britain… Continue reading The English Landscape Garden
Category: history
The real-life Band of Brothers: A good news WW1 story!
A strange thing happened this week whilst researching for my upcoming WW1 book, I came across a good news story! In a war that saw much of an entire generation of young men lost forever, the story of the Calpin brothers is even more amazing as not just one or two joined up but 10… Continue reading The real-life Band of Brothers: A good news WW1 story!
The 10 worst MPs of all time.
The British Parliament is composed of two Houses, the Upper House or House of Lords and the Lower House also known as the House of Commons as it houses the Members of Parliament or MPs elected by the common people. Surprisingly or maybe not as we in the U.K. don’t allow personal use of firearms,… Continue reading The 10 worst MPs of all time.
Bitten to death by a dead mans head: The unfortunate, deserving & true tale of Sigurd Eysteinsson
One of the slightly odd pleasures I had when I was studying at university was learning of various terrible ways people died or executed. To some degree this is normal for many historians but as I majored in amongst others, Mongol history, then it might be clear that I had more deaths than usual to… Continue reading Bitten to death by a dead mans head: The unfortunate, deserving & true tale of Sigurd Eysteinsson
The Book Thief
Yesterday I went to the cinema as I often do on a Tuesday morning, one of the benefits of working from home. Usually the cinema is empty with the staff outnumbering the movie-goers but not yesterday. The cinema is exactly 12 minutes walk away and there are usually 15 minutes of trailers before the film… Continue reading The Book Thief
The tragic genius of Vincent van Gogh
One of the things I was looking forward to when visiting Paris though was not the over-hyped Mona Lisa but the works of Vincent van Gogh in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, one of the largest museums of modern art in the world. Van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter. His work is nearly always… Continue reading The tragic genius of Vincent van Gogh
Visiting Montmatre, home of artists and Sacre Couer
So, we have just about reached the end of our short break in Paris. To be honest I could stay here a lot longer. There may be a few strange things about the place but overall I love it. It’s relative compactness and spacious feeling pavements and public transport are a delight and its overwhelmingly… Continue reading Visiting Montmatre, home of artists and Sacre Couer
The Palace of Versailles
Saturday morning and the sun was out and our spirits were high. Our sore feet were going to be spared the long march to the Seine as instead we were going to the Palace of Versailles about 15 miles out of Paris. The Metro across the river gave us a great view of the Eiffel… Continue reading The Palace of Versailles
The London Frost Fairs of Times Past
Lots of us remember when generally it was a lot colder when we were little. The summers were also less wet too, at least in the U.K. but no-one in their right mind would think of London as being an Artic like city and yet for about 1,000 years in the winter it was exactly… Continue reading The London Frost Fairs of Times Past
The 50th anniversary of the film Zulu & the 135th of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift
When I was a child there were a number films that were always on television whenever there was a national holiday. You could rely on them to appear like clockwork and these included The Great Escape, The Wizard of Oz, James Bond and Zulu. Thirty-five years on and not much as changed except for the… Continue reading The 50th anniversary of the film Zulu & the 135th of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift
Stephen Liddell 