5th June, 2024 in Biography & Memoir, Military
‘Good God!’ I thought after being shown a map with a small area on it that we had taken back, ‘We’ve just taken part in D-Day!’ Flight Lieutenant Noble Frankland (DFC CB CBE) is one of those for whom 6th June 1944 might have been just another ‘ordinary day’ in the operational c…
22nd April, 2024 in Military, Society & Culture
The thought arrived as I was hovering inside a crowded coffee shop directly opposite the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. Tables and bars pulsed with suited, brief cased, device-bashing professionals; the buzz from conversation being shouted and spoken into phones and faces…
3rd April, 2024 in Military
And so, in the early morning of 11 May, 973 heavy bombers took off in fine weather from airfields across East Anglia. Their mission was Operation 350: to fly 500 miles across France to attack railway marshalling yards in Mulhouse, Épinal, Belfort and Chaumont, and an airfield at…
15th January, 2024 in Military, Women in History
Author of Remarkable Women of the Second World War, Victoria Panton Bacon, remembers Pat Rorke. Pat died on 9th December 2023, aged 100 years and five weeks. ‘After the war, you have to learn to live together, remember that you are all human … behind all the bare recounted facts…
18th October, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Military
This memoir is a gripping and unusual account of a survivor of the Shoah in Holland. With impressively clear recall of his childhood and early teens – he was 11 at the outbreak of the war – Lex Lesgever writes of his years on the run and in hiding in Amsterdam and beyond. It is u…
15th August, 2023 in History, Military
In the medieval era, pitched battles were risky affairs; the work of years could be undone in a single day thanks to the vagaries of weather, terrain or simple bad luck. C.B. Hanley author of the Mediaeval Mystery series, including the latest addition Blessed…
12th July, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Military, True Crime
Until I began researching the story of the teenager who risked his life to bring the ‘Butcher of the Balkans? to justice, I knew little of the atrocities committed in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia during the Second World War. I learned that I am far from alone. Most people I s…
23rd September, 2022 in Military
Dedicated chronicler of Black British history, Stephen Bourne explores the many and extraordinary ways in which black people helped Britain fight the Great War, on the battlefield and at home in this new illustrated edition of Black Poppies for children. ‘Publishers in Britain ar…
22nd June, 2022 in Biography & Memoir, Military, Women in History
If I may say so myself, as author of the twelve stories (and epilogue) about the Second World War contained in Remarkable Women of the Second World War, anyone with an insatiable appetite for knowledge about World War Two must read this book. It does not have to be read in…
19th May, 2022 in Military
As news spread of the Allied landings in Normandy, and thoughts turned to the liberation of their country, few throughout France could have predicted the fate of Oradour-sur-Glane, a community in Haute-Vienne, near the city of Limoges. On 10 June 1944 the inhabitants of the large…
13th April, 2022 in Military, Women in History
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”attributed to oscar wilde That honey traps remain among the most widely known and least understood category of intelligence operations is not surprising. Pop culture is filled with images of the irresistible fe…
26th January, 2022 in Local & Family History, Military
Neil R. Storey author of Norwich in the Second World War tells the story of the city and its people, as far as possible, in the words of those who were actually there. When the acclaimed Norfolk author George Borrow described Norwich as ‘a fine old city’ in the nineteenth century…
9th June, 2021 in Military
10 June marks the anniversary of the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre. These identity documents were retrieved from the fire-ravaged remains of a home there. They were found by two Jewish sisters who miraculously survived the tragedy and belonged to their parents Robert and Carmen Pinè…
22nd April, 2021 in History, Local & Family History, Military
During the Irish War of Independence‚ the fort on Spike Island in County Cork was the largest British military run prison for republican prisoners and internees in the Martial Law area. During 1921‚ approximately 300 prisoners and 900 internees were imprisoned there. Most of…
11th November, 2020 in Military
11 November 2020 marked the centenary of the burial within Westminster Abbey of the Unknown Warrior. This was a British soldier who was killed in the First World War, someone who was originally buried in or near one of the many battlefields of the Western Front. The idea of comme…
14th October, 2020 in Military
The story of the British codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park during the Second World War is now justly famous. But Bletchley Park did not arise out of a vacuum. Part of the success of Bletchley Park between 1939 and 1945 was due to the success of the less renowned British codeb…
9th April, 2020 in Military
A confidential letter arrived at the Foreign Office from the British Embassy in Washington informing them that the American Committee had been formed to investigate the Katyn massacre of 1940. This committee was established largely through the efforts of Julius Epstein, a journal…
24th March, 2020 in Military
We think of VE Day as a time of mass celebration; jubilant crowds laughing, dancing and partying. And party they did – but the images shown below also record many whose physical and mental condition or sense of grief and loss would scar them for years to come… Browse our galler…
18th February, 2020 in Military
By 19 February 1945 Iwo Jima had already endured the longest and most intensive aerial attack delivered in the Pacific during the Second World War. It had started with a carrier raid in June 1944 and Seventh Air Force’s B-24 Liberator bombers stationed on the Marianas Islands beg…
11th November, 2019 in Maritime, Military
‘Last night’s raid successful. Tirpitz sunk.’ On 13 November 1944, this announcement at No 5 Bomber Group’s staff conference signalled the end of four and a half years of air effort by the RAF and Fleet Air Arm. The 52,000 tons armoured German battleship with 15in guns capable of…
28th October, 2019 in Military
On Sunday 20 February 1921, during the Irish War of Independence, the flying column of the 4th Battalion, First Cork Brigade was wiped out after being surprised in their base camp by a British Army patrol. The resulting Battle of Clonmult was the IRA’s greatest loss of…
24th September, 2019 in Military
Leave passed all too quickly, and when but ten of the precious fourteen days were gone, a telegram came recalling me to the squadron. The great German offensive on the British Front had begun, and I was almost glad to go. A taxi drive to Filton, which happened…
14th August, 2019 in Military, Society & Culture, Women in History
With only a few exceptions, such as the Crimean war ‘doctress’ Mary Seacole, black women have been ‘written out’ of British history. This is true of the many books published about Britain and the First World War and yet it is possible to uncover life stories from this ‘hidden his…
26th July, 2019 in Military, Women in History
Towards the end of the 1930s, war in Europe seemed inevitable and Britain began to prepare. This time its population would be on the front line and mass mobilisation would be needed on an unprecedented scale. Women would have to take on new civilian roles and join the armed force…
5th June, 2019 in Military
A story of ingenuity and devastating loss of life, the moving history of D-Day – its impact and its cost – is captured here on film in vivid detail. Compiled from the Mirrorpix archives, this collection charts the detailed preparation, the brave action and the enduring after…
5th June, 2019 in Military
Eighty years ago, on 6 June 1944, 168,000 Allied troops stormed ashore on the beaches of Normandy to begin the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe, supported by 12,000 aircraft and nearly 7,000 ships. The invasion plan, initially codenamed Overlord and then designated Neptune and…
29th May, 2019 in Biography & Memoir, Military
Throughout the 1930s, Soviet ‘illegals’ – resident agents operating in Britain – carefully selected, recruited and nurtured emerging talent at Britain’s ancient universities of Cambridge and, to a lesser extent, Oxford. After their graduation these recruits forged highflying care…
22nd March, 2019 in Military
The escape of 76 POWs from Stalag Luft 3 on 24 March 1944 was the greatest mass escape from a prisoner-of-war camp ever known. It caused the Germans serious problems and great embarrassment, and tied up thousands of troops and civilians in a huge two week long search for the pris…
28th January, 2019 in Local & Family History, Military, Society & Culture
During the Napoleonic Wars many thousands of prisoners of war arrived in Britain often to languish in the war prisons for many years. Norman Cross Prison Depot, near Peterborough, was one of the largest with accommodation for up to 7,000 captives and used from 1797 until it close…
25th January, 2019 in Military
When trying to make sense of the vast kaleidoscope of people, purposes and organisations that made up the French Resistance, it is often a good idea to break the country down into smaller parts. This is just what the F section of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Churchill’…