Military

Gilbert Burnet: Bishop and Historian

The author of the History of My Own Time was both a keen churchman and a compulsive writer. Mary Delorme describes how Burnet's style, whether graphic, humorous or pompous, was usually as free and expansive as the historian himself.

Dien Bien Phu

Patrick Turnbull writes that the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which opened on March 3rd, 1954, and continued until early May, marked the end not only of French, but of European hegemony in Asia.

Nana Sahib at Cawnpore: 1857

Christopher Hibbert describes how the massacre at Cawnpore was one of the events in the Indian Mutiny not expected by benevolent British Commanders.

Chimurenga

The term ‘Chimurenga’ has various historical associations. It was originally used to describe the first rising against British rule of the 1890s; the Rhodesian Bush War of the 1970s is known as the Second Chimurenga. J.V. Woolford, writing as the Bush War was ongoing, puts the term in context.

Charles I at York 1642

York was in the heart of Royalist country at the beginning of the English Civil War. William Thurlow describes how it became the King’s capital.

Cavagnari of Kabul

J.M. Brereton introduces Pierre Louis Napolean Cavagnari, a soldier of French-Italian and Irish descent, who played a distinguished part in British relations with Afghanistan, eventually costing him his life.