Lately I have been seeing something of English Civil War re-enactments. I have absolutely no interest in dressing up in seventeenth-century clothes, bearing a musket, or shouting my allegiance to Charles or Cromwell, but it is fascinating to see those who do. Most recently I witnessed members of the English Civil War Society (ECWS) inRead More
Some places have so little to tell about themselves, and that can be part of their appeal. Take Egypt Bay, for example. It’s a small bay on the northern coast of the Hoo Peninsula, that overlooked piece of land jutting out of the Kent mainland, caught between Essex and Sheppey. The River Thames flows byRead More
There can hardly be a better place for observing the continuum of history and time than the Medway valley. While life may appear to have slowed to a standstill in these days of lockdown, brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, everywhere I turn there are the layers of time, as though looking at an exposedRead More
What are we to do with ruins? Visiting Athens, as I have been doing, you see a city defined by its ruined past. Everywhere, or in the centre at least, a modern city and the surviving traces of its existence two or three millennia ago, each define the other. The ruins of temples, market places,Read More
Few arguments can be more engrossing to take up, yet with so little hope of resolution, than the relationship between history and film. It is almost as if one of the chief functions of film is to bring history into confusion. Actuality film – newsreels, newsfilms, documentaries, home movies – appears to capture moments ofRead More
Earlier this year I wrote a blog post about the director Peter Jackson’s plans to produce documentary featuring colourised footage from the First World War. Though nothing was available of the film bar a single still, I was alarmed by the rationale behind it. The argument seemed to be that digital technology now allowed usRead More
The founding figures of many societies are lost in myth. Perhaps the Romulus and Remus of Rome, or Moses for the Jewish people, had some grounding in historical figures, but there is no way we will ever know. In any case, the idea of a founding figure is a myth in itself, as if anywhereRead More
I read a good many books in 2016; I drank a good many cups of coffee while I was doing so. Sometimes other beverages, but mostly coffee. If you just want to see the books rather than read about them, you can go to my Flickr page, The book I’m reading the drink I’m drinking,Read More
I live next door to a castle. This is quite a privilege, and though in summer time the leaves of a large tree hide the building from my window, in winter-time I enjoy castle views (as the estate agents like to say around here). Rochester Castle looks very fine from the outside, though it isRead More
I have spent the past few months reading Sir Steven Runciman’s three-volume A History of the Crusades. It’s one of those works that has sat on the shelves for a long while, daring me to find the stamina to read through all 1,430 pages. But one day – to be precise, it was the dayRead More