Never surrender: The siege of the Alcázar of Toledo, July-September 1936
No episode of Spain’s bloody and brutal Civil War is more swathed in myth than the siege of Toledo’s historic Alcázar. Ninety years on, Nigel Jones tells its story.
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A world upside down: The American Revolution – Part 4: the final act
In the concluding part of our series marking 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, Fred Chiaventone reveals how the Revolutionary War was won at last.
UK news in brief
Shots from 13th-century catapult discovered outside Kenilworth Castle Eight stone catapult-shots from Henry III’s siege of Kenilworth Castle have been found perfectly preserved outside its walls. The shots range in weight from 20kg to 105kg, and would have been launched…
Asterix’s legacy at Alésia
Richard Hodges explores Alésia in Burgundy and the legacy of Julius Caesar’s defeat of Vercingétorix and the Gauls.
Egypt 1801: the end of Napoleon’s eastern empire
Within the space of three years between 1798 and 1801, Napoleon’s aspirations for an eastern empire were smashed. Not in Europe, where he reigned militarily supreme, but far away in the Near East – by Nelson at the Battle of…
War on Film: The Desert Rats (1953)
The battle scenes are, in the main, well made, especially in showing what it was like for men hiding in dugouts and wadis in the desert under intense artillery-fire.
War on Film: Malta Story
Taylor Downing reviews a classic war movie.
English Civil War massacre ‘cover-up’ revealed
New research has attempted to establish why a brutal massacre during the English Civil War has been largely forgotten by history. The site of a Royalist garrison in Nottinghamshire, Shelford Manor was besieged by Parliamentary forces on 3 November 1645.…