by David West | Dec 5, 2024 | News
I have written about Renaissance writers, artists, musicians, and scientists. But how did the Renaissance come about? Francis Petrarch, often called the “Father of Humanism,” played a pivotal role in laying the intellectual and cultural groundwork for the...
by David West | Dec 4, 2024 | News
At time of writing there have been seven popes during my lifetime. The only other pope that I know much about was Pope Paul V, because he features in Fire and Earth, the second book in the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures. But there was an English Pope and his relatives...
by David West | Dec 2, 2024 | News
Having served as an officer in the Royal Naval Reserve, when it comes to battles of 1805, I think of Trafalgar. Yet ashore the battle of the year was Austerlitz. The Battle of Austerlitz, also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was fought on the second of...
by David West | Dec 1, 2024 | News
My post for 25th November concerned Elizabeth of Russia. She sounded quite good back then. But by 1st December 1742 she’d ordered the expulsion of all Jews from Russia. I sought in Called to Account, the fourth book in the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures, to explore...
by David West | Nov 30, 2024 | News
By the 30th November 1630, 16,000 inhabitants of Venice had died that month from the plague. This outbreak, part of the Second Pandemic of bubonic plague, devastated northern and central Italy, including Venice, leaving a lasting impact on the city’s population,...
