Patrick Boniface analyses the expansion and transformation of the US Navy during the American Civil War. ‘Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I shall spend the first four sharpening the axe.’ So said Abraham Lincoln, one of America’s greatest presidents, and he might well have been speaking about the creation of the […]
Category: Modern
Theatre: The Wipers Times by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman
‘The War is not funny, Sir.’ – Colonel Howfield. ‘I’ve a feeling that may be the point.’ – General Mitford. Seema Syeda reviews Ian Hislop and Nick Newman’s hit sensation, The Wipers Times. Lovers of satire, puns, and slap-stick comedy will delight in this new gem of a play from writers Ian Hislop and Nick Newman, The Wipers […]
Churchill’s Great Escape
Patrick Boniface examines the lives of history’s most daring wartime captives. In November 1899, the 25-year-old Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was travelling in an armoured train transiting between Frere and Chieveley, in the British colony of Natal in South Africa. The soldiers were making a fast reconnoitre of the territory, and Churchill was there to send […]
Passchendaele centenary commemorations
The UK Government is holding two commemorative events in Ypres, Belgium, to mark the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres), fought during the First World War. Raging from 31 July to 10 November 1917, Passchendaele is widely remembered as one of the most hellish battles of the war. While it […]
Great Escapes: Roger Bushell
Patrick Boniface examines the lives of history’s most daring wartime captives. Roger Joyce Bushell was born on 30 August 1910 in Springs, Transvaal, in South Africa. His parents had moved to South Africa to pursue business interests in the mining industry. Roger received a first-class education there until the age of 14, when he transferred […]
Blitzed: drugs in Nazi Germany
Hitler almost died of a cocaine overdose, and the Wehrmacht’s blitzkrieg was powered by methamphetamine. These are just two of the areas of investigation in Blitzed, Norman Ohler’s study of the massive pharmacological intake at all levels of the Nazi war-machine. Ohler begins by detailing the widespread availability of cocaine and morphine in early 20th-century […]
Shifting Sands: Lawrence of Arabia and the Great Arab Revolt
Shifting Sands is an exhibition about T E Lawrence, probably known to most of us as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. The title inevitably conjures up pictures of desert sands whipped up into fierce sandstorms by violent winds. There is, however, a subtler subtext, linked to Lawrence’s mindset, to the shifting sands of his personality. Both of […]
Mussolini’s secret time-capsule
Classics scholars Hans Lemers and Bettina Reitz-Joosse have produced an critical edition and translation of a forgotten Latin text that reveals the ideological intricacies of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s Fascism. The text is the Codex Fori Mussolini (or the Mussolini Forums Codex), and it lies beneath the Mussolini obelisk in Rome – a stone column […]
MUSEUM REVIEW: National WWI Museum and Memorial, Kansas City, USA
The name of this stunning museum is a bit of a misnomer for, if anything, it is not national but international in its scope – a fact that is certainly appropriate for the subject matter. Located on a beautiful slope in the heart of Kansas City, Missouri, this amazing structure, with its 217 -tall memorial […]
BEHIND THE IMAGE: COSSACK BAY, BALAKLAVA, 1855 BY ROGER FENTON
This bustling black-and-white photograph offers an atmospheric view of a natural harbour crowded with ships, campaign tents, livestock and supplies. Titled Cossack Bay, Balaklava, and taken during the summer months of 1855 – just a couple of decades after the birth of photography – it is part of a fascinating portfolio of pictures of the […]