Lest We Forget
Posted at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, one hundred years on. Words are largely superfluous. Here, with minimal captioning, are some relics and memorials of the ‘war to end all wars’, encountered during my travels over the years. The naval cemetery, Lyness, Hoy, Orkney The spark: the bloodstained uniform […]
Of Commemoration and Cake
To Pembroke Dock for the weekend, to attend and give a paper at a conference commemorating Wales and the Sea during the First World War. Jointly organised by Morol, the Institute of Welsh Maritime Historical Studies, and the U-Boat Project of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales, this proved to […]
Flight of Fancy
Apologies – I thought this had been posted last Monday, and have only just realised that it wasn’t! Obviously not yet got the hang of scheduling on the new WordPress platform…anyway, enjoy! *** I got a certificate last week. The getting of certificates is, of course, one of life’s many little pleasures, especially in one’s […]
Baroque and Roll
There’s an old adage to the effect that the best tourist experiences are obtained in places where tourists don’t go, and in recent weeks, I’ve been on a couple of trips which amply bear that out. Take, for example, this photo which I took in the Hall of Mirrors at the palace of Versailles at […]
The British Fleet at the Battle of Solebay, 28 May 1672
This week, this blog returns to one of its principal focuses, raising awareness of seventeenth century naval history and particularly that of the ‘Restoration age’. To that end, I’m delighted to welcome back, as a guest blogger, Frank Fox, the author of Great Ships: The Battlefleet of King Charles II and The Four Days Battle of 1666. For […]
Review: The New Tudor and Stuart Seafarers Gallery at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich
A disclaimer: this post has been written and posted rather more rapidly than usual, as it was only yesterday evening (19 September) that I went with the ‘LadyQJ’ of my Twitter feed (aka Wendy) to the launch event for the four new permanent galleries at the National Maritime Museum. So apologies if there are more […]
Act of Remembrance
This post is due to be published on 3 September 2018. (Apologies for the delay – there was a glitch in scheduling it.) On that date, I’ll actually be in France, and specifically at the Saint-Sever military cemetery, on the outskirts of Rouen. The reason for being there is that it’s the centenary of the death […]
The Agonising
As far as I’m aware, there’s no collective noun for a gathering of historical novelists; but if there was, it would probably be ‘an agonising’. This was demonstrated in spades last week, at the 2018 conference of the Historical Novel Society. What do historical novelists agonise about? Pretty much everything, really…but more of that anon. […]
Sounding the Trumpet
I don’t often review books to which I’ve contributed, but this week, I’m going to make an exception and do a bit of trumpet blowing. During the last couple of weeks, the post has brought, inter alia, two complimentary copies of titles with which I was associated to varying degrees. The first is of the National […]
