Turner’s Modern World

All great artists need great subjects. Joseph Mallord William Turner was no exception. Although extremely talented, he was especially fortunate to have lived through stirring times.…

Military History Matters 119

• The Franco-Prussian War
• Prokhorovka, 1943: the greatest tank battle in history?
• Medieval Irish warfare: Dark Ages to the Tudors
• The genesis of airpower
• Ian Fleming: the wartime exploits of Bond’s creator…

The myth of chivalry

Neil Faulkner argues that the supposed ‘supremacy’ of heavy horse on European battlefields in the Middle Ages is a romantic fantasy.…

Lancaster: the forging of a very British legend

Penned by former RAF Navigator and Gulf War veteran John Nichol, Lancaster is one of the most enthralling aviation history books I have read. But its succinct title does not do it justice. Its pages narrate not only the history of the legendary bomber but also of those who flew…

Allenby: making the modern Middle East

Edward Henry Hynman Allenby was born in 1861 in Brackenhurst, Nottinghamshire in comfortable circumstances – a Victorian squire perhaps destined to help govern the British Empire on behalf of the Queen-Empress.…

War Athletes: Clem Lewis

At the turn of the 20th century, the first ‘Golden Era’ of Welsh rugby ushered in the national team’s rise to dominance and infused ‘rugger’ into the country’s lifeblood. Lewis, for his part, embraced the game body and soul.…

Back to the Drawing Board: Vasa

The early 17th century marked a period of rapid growth in warships as the galleons of the previous century began to give way to the ship-of-the-line, which would dominate naval warfare for the next 250 years. One of the first such vessels was the English 55-gun Prince Royal, completed in…

Medieval Irish Warriors

It was as aggressors that the Irish first made their impact on European history. The quasi-legendary Irish warlord Cormac mac Airt, from the 3rd century AD, not only subdued almost all of Ireland, he also launched destructive attacks on Roman Britain. Another who did so, the following century, was Niall…

Wartime Christmas

Christmas at the front was about making do. Here, for instance, British soldiers have gathered in a shell hole around a makeshift table. Some are sitting on the ground, others on what appears to be rolled-up sheets of wire.…

Fleming’s War

With the latest James Bond blockbuster out next year, MHM assistant editor Calum Henderson explores the life of the man who created him: Ian Fleming, whose wartime adventures rivalled those of 007 himself.…

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