I'm marginally ill today - mild fever, slight achiness, low energy - and because of that, I'm disappointed that I've already finished Giles Milton's Nathaniel's Nutmeg: or, the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History. Because this, my friends, is my v...
2010 bookcrossing review:This was a really interesting read. I didn´t realise when I picked it up, but Samurai William - William Adams, was the guy who inspired the character in the book which was then turned into the tv series Shogun... that was a roundabout way of describing it... but anyway. T...
High 5. Milton has produced a more entertaining follow-up to his previous outing in charting the history of Elizabethan voyages of discovery to America. Cabot's discoveries in 1497 had sparked intense interest in the possible riches to be made across the Atlantic, and even during the reign of Hen...
‘Wanted,’ it read, ‘respectable woman to take young child.’ The advertisement had been placed in the newspaper by Evelina Marmon, a twenty-five-year-old barmaid. Two months earlier, in January 1896, Evelina had given birth to a baby girl named Doris. Unable to meet the cost of feeding and clothin...
Can it really be true?’ Wolfram knew nothing about the capture of Pforzheim by Allied forces. Nor, indeed, was he aware that the town of his childhood lay in ruins. It was not until May 1945, fully three months after the bombing raid (and a week after Hitler’s suicide), that he first learned of t...
In reality, it was not an invasion at all. A mere 1,500 men had been put ashore and their goal was to secure the stockpiles of unused weaponry, not to attack the Bolsheviks. Yet it had led to a swift reaction from Lenin and Trotsky. The raid on the Western consulates on the day of the landings wa...
It was rumoured that a resourceful young explorer from Brussels called Oliver Brunei had travelled a considerable distance along the northern shores of Russia and claimed he was on the verge of discovering the North-East Passage. Confident of success, he was now planning to board a Russian ship a...
From the window of her drawing room, she noticed a great column of soldiers shuffling through the village square. Intrigued by the spectacle, and curious to know where they were going, she made her way down the long drive towards the main gate of her property. It did not take her long to realise ...