by David West | Dec 30, 2025 | News
On the 30th of December, 1641, during the Reapers’ War, Louis XIII of France was appointed Count of Barcelona. This caught my interest because Louis XIII is a key character in The Suggested Assassin, the third book in the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures, and also my...
by David West | Dec 29, 2025 | News
On the 29th of December, 1170, Thomas Becket was murdered in Cantabury Cathedral, but I’ve already posted about that. On the same day in 1989 the Czech writer, philosopher and dissident, Václav Havel, was elected the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia....
by David West | Dec 28, 2025 | News
The Tay Bridge disaster, one of the most infamous engineering tragedies in British history, occurred on the evening of the 28th of December 1879. It involved the catastrophic collapse of a section of the original Tay Railway Bridge during a violent winter storm,...
by David West | Dec 27, 2025 | News
Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on the 27th of December 2007. I am a life member of the Oxford Union which I joined shortly after matriculating in September 1979. Sadly I was just a few years late for Richard Nixon’s speech to the Oxford Union where he admitted to...
by David West | Dec 26, 2025 | News
I have written about my father’s war as a Desert Rat. I was commissioned in the Royal Naval Reserve and have an interest in ships and the sea. I have also written about the sinking of the Bismark, but today I shall write about the Scharnhorst. The German warship...
by David West | Dec 25, 2025 | News
Happy Christmas dear readers. I have previously written about the origin of the 25th of December as the date on which we celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. So I have chosen to write about Sweyn Forkbeard today. He was King of Denmark from 986 CE, and according...
