THE BLUE PENCIL
My novel, set between 1936 and 1939, has eerie echoes of today. From May 1937, Neville Chamberlain’s government restricted access to...
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- Apr 14, 2020
- 3 min
SEVENTY FIVE YEARS ON
The Durham Light Infantry and the Belsen Concentration Camp David Lowther Three-quarters of a century ago, soldiers from the 11th....
- Jan 26, 2020
- 4 min
REMEMBER
January 27th. 1945 On this day in 1945, the 60th. Army of the First Ukranian Front arrived at a vast complex of of factories, camps,...
- Nov 24, 2019
- 4 min
GODALMING: Town of Tales and Light
by DAVID LOWTHER Godalming is a town about 4 miles south of Guildford with a population of twenty-one thousand. My wife and I came to...
- Oct 14, 2019
- 3 min
CLAUD COCKBURN 1904 – 1981
‘Believe nothing until it has been officially denied’ Claud Cockburn was a Marxist and a journalist whom some have called the father of...
- Jul 29, 2019
- 4 min
EIGHTY YEARS AGO
Members of the UK electorate may be worried in 2019 about the consequences of the Brexit ‘war’ but the situation eighty years ago was far...
- Aug 25, 2018
- 5 min
PEACE and the BIGGEST MISTAKE
Ten years ago I decided to take advantage of my retirement by doing some writing. As I had earlier taught some aspects of twentieth...
- Nov 11, 2017
- 6 min
The Months Before the War
Six years ago, I began researching archive film, historical documents and first hand accounts of the turbulent years of British history...
- May 21, 2016
- 4 min
WEEKEND IN BERLIN
Ten years or more on from our first visit, my wife Anne and I returned last weekend to Berlin. We had a very decent hotel, close to...
- Mar 19, 2014
- 3 min
Judith Kerr – refugee
DISCOVERING JUDITH KERR and WHEN HITLER STOLE PINK RABBIT In November 2013, the BBC in the UK screened a programme called Hitler, the...
- Mar 2, 2014
- 2 min
DEFENDING THE MONUMENTS MEN
DEFENDING THE MONUMENTS MEN George Clooney’s film The Monuments Men opened in the UK to generally poor reviews a couple of weeks ago....
- Jan 22, 2014
- 6 min
TEN WORLD WAR TWO NOVELS YOU MAY NOT HAVE HEARD OF BUT SHOULD READ
People have been writing fiction about the Second World War for seventy years. There were novels written during the war, in its immediate...
- Jan 15, 2014
- 3 min
SUITE FRANCAISE by IRENE NEMIROVSKY. The story of an extraordinary novel
Something about the novel to start. It was written in 1941-2. There are two novels, linked by a small French community which appears in...
- Dec 11, 2013
- 3 min
RED LOVE by MAXIM LEO: A review
Red Love is an autobiographical memoir by Maxim Leo who was nineteen when the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989. It’s not, strictly...
- Oct 30, 2013
- 3 min
THE SECOND WORLD WAR and THE EUROPEAN UNION
In the summer of 1945, Germany lay in ruins. Millions were dead either in battle, through persecution or as a result of allied bombing...
- Oct 9, 2013
- 3 min
EUROPE AT WAR 1939-1945 No Simple Victory. Thoughts on Norman Davies’ superb book
There are, of course, enough books about the Second World War to fill the Grand Canyon. There are illustrated books, novels, personal...
- Sep 14, 2013
- 5 min
Untitled
VENGEANCE and THE SECOND WORLD WAR I make no apologies in saying that the majority of detail in this post comes from Keith Lowe’s...
- Aug 28, 2013
- 2 min
Writing TWO FAMILIES AT WAR
By the end of September, I hope to submit the manuscript of my second novel Two Families at War to my publisher. I’m almost satisfied...
- Jul 25, 2013
- 6 min
NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN DID THE WRONG THING
That was the final outcome of a fascinating debate held at the Royal Geographical Society in London and organised by Intelligence Squared...
- Jul 3, 2013
- 3 min
THE BEST OF OUR SPIES by ALEX GERLIS:
THE BEST OF OUR SPIES by ALEX GERLIS: Review Alex Gerliis’ first novel starts with a bang and keeps the reader gripped until the final...
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