Military

Michael Srigley describes how, on November 30th, 1718, one of the foremost soldiers of the age was shot while besieging a fortress in Norway. Did he succumb to a stray bullet, or was he assassinated?

The Dambusters Raid is one of the best known operations of the Second World War. But, as James Holland explains, the development of the ‘bouncing bomb’ took place against a background of bitter rivalry between the armed services.

Exile to the Netherlands following the First World War chastened Kaiser Wilhelm II, but Robin Bruce Lockhart cannot believe that the former ruler of imperial Germany was ever either the mountebank, or the monster, which his biographers have tried to make him.

Alastair Hennessy draws parallels between Carlist Spain of the nineteenth century and Franco's twentieth century fascist regime.

Gibraltar provides one of the examples of how the British Empire was 'acquired in a fit of absence of mind'. 

The great Confederate commander was fatally wounded at Chancellorsville on May 2nd, 1863.

Britain’s loss of Singapore in February 1942 was a terrible blow. But Japan failed to make the most of its prize, says Malcolm Murfett.

Of the many immigrants from the United Kingdom who took up arms in the war, only a small number were English. 

The tall army recruits known as the Potsdam Giants, F.L. Carsten writes, played a considerable part in the British diplomacy during the early 18th century, and the efforts of the Prussian recruiting sergeants to procure men of the desired size extended to the British Isles.

A discussion between Napoleon, exiled in St. Helena, and Henry Ellis, returning with Lord Amherst’s embassy to China, about England's international standing.