The Last White Rose: Dynasty, Rebellion & Treason: the secret war against the Tudors. By Desmond Seward Fifteen years ago Desmond Seward published with Constable what is for my money the best and richest modern narrative history of the fiercely complex Wars of the Roses. In this belated sequel from the same publisher he takes […]

Not to be confused with the former Tory leader, Michael Howard, Emeritus Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, is, now approaching 90,  the undisputed doyen of Britain’s military historians. A veteran of the 1943 Salerno landings, he is also one of the few Military History writers who has personally experienced the (very) sharp end […]

In an increasingly digital world, electronic communication is the deciding and dominant factor in making things happen. Markets move electronically; news and rumours of news are communicated electronically; people put their previously private thoughts not onto paper but into cyberspace – sometimes inadvertently – and, hey presto!, they find they are sharing them with the […]

      The Medieval World at War Matthew Bennett (ed.) Spanning some 1,000 years from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance and the Reformation, this book is an ambitious attempt to chart the evolution of warfare in the medieval period. Though it covers Central Asian, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese warfare, […]

Desmond Seward’s Wings over the Desert is the story of his pugnacious Franco-Irish father, Eric, who used family connections to join the RFC and serve ‘in a hot climate’. He flew many sorties over the Sinai and Palestine, crashing 6 times and, in what was to become known as the ‘Seward Exploit’, ditching in the […]