Tim Spicer

Guest Writer at GetHistory

Lieutenant Colonel Tim Spicer OBE has led a life filled with action and adventure. During his twenty years in the British Army, he saw active service in Northern Ireland, the Falklands campaign, the Gulf War and the Balkans, as well as serving in the Far East, Cyprus and Germany. Over the course of this illustrious military career, Spicer has developed extensive knowledge of intelligence, counterterrorism, complex relations and protective security. In 2001 he founded the private security company Aegis, which has counted the UK, US and Italian governments among its clients.

He is the author of An Unorthodox Soldier: Peace and War and the Sandline Affair (2000), a fast-moving account of his military life, including the events surrounding his time in Papua New Guinea when he was captured and held at gunpoint, as well as the notorious ‘Sandline Affair’ of 1996; A Dangerous Enterprise (2021) that charts the history of the little-known, yet remarkable 15th Motor Gunboat Flotilla, commanded directly by the Secret Intelligence Service; and A Suspicion of Spies (2024) the first biography of Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale, a ruthless and effective spymaster whose career spanned the Russian Revolution to the Cold War and beyond.

The Latest from Tim Spicer

Second World War

Following the Thread: The Road to 'An Axe and Four Balloons'

How one chance visit to a museum led me to three extraordinary stories

by Tim Spicer

On this day in history

490 BCE - The Athenians fought the Persians at the Battle of Marathon.

1440 - Henry VI founded Eton College for 25 poor scholars, but beware those with ill-kempt heads, unwashed faces and foul clothes!

1846 - Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning eloped to Italy. Elizabeth's father disapproved of her marriage and she was disinherited.

1914 - The First Battle of the Marne ended. Allied forces had stopped the German offensive in France, but had also prevented any hope of a mobile war, leading to the stalemate and trench warfare that characterised the First World War.

1919 - On a mission to report on potentially disruptive groups, Hitler attended a meeting of the German Workers' Party (DAP in German). Angered by a speaker, he entered into an argument that impressed Anton Drexler so much that Hitler was invited to join the party. Less than a week later, Hitler became the '555th' (in reality 7th) member of the DAP.

1922 - The Episcopal Church removed the word 'obey' from the bride's section of the wedding vows.

1943 - Ex-Dictator of Italy Benito Mussolini was spectacularly rescued from house arrest in Abruzzi by German commandos during the Gran Sasso raid.

1990 - The two German states and the four powers occupying Germany at the end of the Second World War signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany. In it, the four powers renounced all rights they held in Germany, paving the way to German reunification.

2012 - The Hillsborough Independent panel concluded the 1989 football stadium disaster, in which 96 men, women, and children died, was due to 'a lack of police control'.