20th Century
Contrary to the prevailing mythology, not only did the Allies and the Royal Navy win the campaign in the Arctic, but they did so with the help of a huge and previously largely unacknowledged signals intelligence effort, at the heart of which lay the…
Just twenty years after the War to End All Wars, Britain was once again at war with Germany. With hindsight a second conflagration had seemed inevitable, so did Britain sleepwalk into a world war that could have been avoided?
Women's roles in British Intelligence have largely been missing from the wider narratives of the world wars. Their legacy has been hidden for far too long.
'The Fierce' tells the untold true story of a teenager who set out to bring the worst war criminal in America to justice. It is a David versus Goliath tale, set in the Cold War, when fear of communism permeated every facet of American life.
RMS Titanic hit an iceberg off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland at 11:40pm on 14 April 1912. Just two hours and forty minutes after the collision with the iceberg, RMS Titanic broke into two and sank. She crashed onto the ocean floor, almost 2.5…
It has taken a long time for the endeavours of forces like the Polish II Corps to make their way back into the global consciousness. There is still a long way to go until both the heroism and betrayal are fully appreciated.
The myths of the ‘Great War’ are the foundation myths of the twentieth century, providing a frame of reference for understanding ourselves and our community. In Britain, the pervading myth is one of soldiers bravely sacrificing themselves in a…
The Wannsee Conference of 20 January 1942, was a cross-departmental meeting of the Nazi government. Its goal was brutally and clinically simple: to organise the final solution to the Jewish question.
On 11 December 1936, Edward VIII abdicated after spending just 11 months on the throne. His reason was simple: he wanted to marry the socially-unacceptable love of his life, Wallis Simpson. This left a trail of intrigue, rumour and recrimination…
At 7.30 on 1 July 1916, as the whistles fell silent, men climbed out of their trenches and headed across No Man's Land, with the objective of reaching and taking the German lines. So started the Battle of the Somme, remembered as one of the…
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