Happy New Year! But why the 1st of January? It was on the 1st of January, 153BCE that Roman first began their year in office on the 1st of January. In 45BCE the Julian calendar was adopted as the civil calendar of the Roman Republic with the 1st of January as the...

I recently posted about Vandals and their defeat by General Belisarius in 533CE. Oddly the first two events that I find for the 31st of December concern the Vandals and General Belisarius again. On this day in 406CE the Vandals, Alans and Suebians crossed the Rhine...

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...

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....

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,...

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...

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...

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...

On the 24th of December, 1941, Benghazi was captured by the British Eighth Army. My father served in the 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade, 7th Armoured Division, Eighth Army. So let’s look into the history of Benghazi. Benghazi, the second largest city in Libya, has a long...

Happy New Year! But why the 1st of January? It was on the 1st of January, 153BCE that Roman first began their year in office on the 1st of January. In 45BCE the Julian calendar was adopted as the civil calendar of the Roman Republic with the 1st of January as the...

I recently posted about Vandals and their defeat by General Belisarius in 533CE. Oddly the first two events that I find for the 31st of December concern the Vandals and General Belisarius again. On this day in 406CE the Vandals, Alans and Suebians crossed the Rhine...

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...

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....

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,...

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...

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...

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...

On the 24th of December, 1941, Benghazi was captured by the British Eighth Army. My father served in the 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade, 7th Armoured Division, Eighth Army. So let’s look into the history of Benghazi. Benghazi, the second largest city in Libya, has a long...