International Relations

The Palestinians and British Perfidy: The Tragic Aftermath of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, C.W.R. Long, Sussex Academic Press, 2018, 307p, £75-00. ISBN 1845198961978. One of the hazards of modern-day British politics, an experience shared by politicians in both of our main political parties, is to express a view or...

Stunning archaeological discoveries have shed new light on the reign of Alfred the Great and his struggles with the Vikings, revealing the might of the Viking armies and the international connections of his kingdom.

The riches of surviving Anglo-Saxon manuscripts showcased in a fabulous new exhibition at the British Library emphasises the essential interconnections between England and the Continent.

Paula Kitching introduces a very remarkable First World War memorial to a specific group of Yorkshire workers.

Many fascinating individuals appear in the British Library’s Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition – Bede, Alfred, Canute, Emma, William the Conqueror – but one deserves to be much better known, especially in this her anniversary year: one of the most important women in British history, hers is a classic case of the...

The Book of the Poppy, Chris McNab, The History Press, Stroud, paperback, ISBN 9780750982481 As Remembrance Day is commemorated in 2018 one hundred years on from the ending of hostilities, this concise and evocative compact volume, first published in hardback in 2014 and now reissued in paperback, provides an illuminating...

The Poisoned Well: Empire and its Legacy in the Middle East, Roger Hardy, Hurst and Company, London, paperback, 2018, ISBN 9781849049542. Roger Hardy worked for more than twenty years as a Middle East analyst with the BBC World service. In this book he ‘unearths an imperial history stretching from North Africa...

D-Day: The Soldiers’ Story, by Giles Milton, London, John Murray, 2018, ISBN 978-1-473-4901-9. £25.00 Why one side wins, and another does not, is the key element in military history. That element is not well answered by focusing on the face of battle, the approach that is so often taken today....

Ironside. The Authorized Biography of Field Marshal Lord Ironside, by Edmund Ironside, Stroud: The History Press, 2018, 414 pp., ISBN 978 0750 963794, £40.00 An effective and interesting work that makes excellent use of the Ironside diaries in order to throw particular light on the interwar British army and the...

Travellers in the Third Reich. The Rise of Fascism through the Eyes of Everyday People, Julia Boyd. London: Elliott and Thompson Limited, 2017, 488 pp., ISBN 978 1 78396 381 2, £10.99 A well-written and interesting account that reflects not only a wideranging trawl through a range of sources but...

Imperial ambitions during the First World War extended beyond the Middle East and Africa.  In this article Ben Markham looks at the territorial wrangling over Greenland. It is well known that the British Empire grew in size significantly in the wake of the First World War. In the course of...

Richard Broadhead provides a personal view on whether the mammoth task of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission can always be fulfilled, especially at a time of so many anniversaries.

This article examines the importance of understanding the experiences of the Indian Forces during the First World War and how that can affect young people today. One hundred and four years ago the British Empire was one of the largest global operations in existence. Roughly a quarter of the world’s population...

Travelling from the Western Front to fight former Allies in Russia is not the usual story of 1919 for a British ‘Tommy’.  Yet that was the story of some of those men still serving King and Country. On 9 January 1918 the supplement to The London Gazette, an official paper...

Warfare, Raiding and Defence in Early Medieval Britain, by Erik Grigg, Marlborough: Robert Hale, 2018, 224 pp., £25; ISBN 978 0 7198 26788. A sophisticated analysis of defence in early-medieval Britain that focuses on the widespread building of early-modern dykes in order to thwart the raids that were an incessant...

Hitler’s British Isles: The Real Story of the Occupied Channel Islands, Duncan Barrett, Simon and Schuster, 2018, 413p, £20-00.  ISBN 978-1-4711-6637-2 Having just read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Bloomsbury 2008), this very interesting book has now extended considerably my understanding of the nature of the experiences of...

Paradise in Chains: The Bounty Mutiny and the Founding of Australia, Diane Preston, Bloomsbury, 2018, 333pp., £25 hard, ISBN 978-1-63286-610-3 William Bligh hold the unenviable record of having suffered two mutinies in his career. The story of the mutiny on the Bounty in April 1789 and of William Bligh's and his men's survival...

Dave Martin investigates why there is a war memorial for German soldiers, ‘buried in a foreign field’, in a Dorset churchyard.

Joe Wilkinson takes us on a tour of the island of Zanzibar, where the slave trade continued long after the British abolished it. Mention Zanzibar and most people will think of an Indian Ocean paradise, perfect for honeymooners, relaxing on the popular pristine white north-eastern beaches of Bwejuu and Paje,...

Daniel Steinbach asks why the loss of the German colonies in Africa was perceived as a powerful symbol of Germany’s deliberate humiliation at the end of the First World War. Famously, Germany’s first and last shots of the First World War were fired in Africa. From its beginning to its...