Few female personalities dominate medieval history in the way that Eleanor of Aquitaine does. History is so utterly dominated by men, from kings and princes to bishops, soldiers, merchants, that to encounter an individual like Eleanor, whose influence is still being felt to this day, is beyond re...
Blood in the Snow, Blood on the Grass Unarmed German occupation troops relaxing. When Hitler invaded the USSR in June 1941, Stalin ordered French communists to assassinate these soft targets, causing reprisals costing thousands of French lives.
In the spring of 1188 William II of Sicily sent his ammiratus ammiratorum, or Grand Admiral Margaritus, with a fleet of sixty ships and 200 knights to control the sea lanes to and from the Holy Land and to protect the coastal cities against Saladin’s depredations. The Sicilians sided with Guy de ...
Eleanor would have been familiar with them from her time in the schools: ‘In a tempest, the captain says the ship must be lightened to give a chance of survival. Which do you throw overboard, an old slave who has served you well but no longer has any monetary value or your expensive new horse?’ I...
Two months earlier, in November 1941, La Légion des Combattants had been renamed Légion des Combattants et Volontaires de la Révolution Nationale, with membership open to all, whether ex-servicemen or not. This made it effectively the only political party in the Vichy state. To create an ultra fo...
Apart from 100 miles of Black Sea coastline, to the south is Bulgaria, then, clockwise, come Serbia, Hungary, Ukraine, Moldova and Ukraine again – the last three all part of USSR in 1945. On every border lies disputed territory and the dormant claims are reflected in the multiple names for major ...