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Articles by Henry Elkins

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About Henry Elkins

A keen researcher of family ancestors, Henry will be reporting on the centenary of World War One. More Posts

A WW1 landmark makes the news

Three and a half years ago now – travelling with a small group in the area of the Somme – my brother and I made a significant breakthrough on a little project we had given ourselves to try and discover the final resting places of two Allied airmen who had been downed upon a reconnaissance [...]

November 2, 2018 // 0 Comments

The never-ending quest

It is a truism to state that our planet the Earth is a wondrous thing. Never mind all the life-threatening 21st Century issues – climate change, deforestation, ongoing destruction of natural habitats, the finite aspect of fossil fuel and other resources, population growth, geopolitical anarchy, [...]

October 26, 2018 // 0 Comments

The Sandham Chapel

Yesterday in the company of Alice Mansfield and Douglas Heath I visited the Stanley Spencer chapel in Burghclere, Newbury. For a number of reasons I was underwhelmed. First the chapel itself seems more a modern crematorium more than a spiritual place. Second, it had a rather confused gestation. The [...]

October 25, 2018 // 0 Comments

Marking the Centenary

The the centenary next month of the end of the conflict sometimes described by those alive at the time and/or both shortly afterwards as ‘the war to end all wars’ – and otherwise generally known as either ‘The Great War’ or ‘First World War’ – is [...]

October 20, 2018 // 0 Comments

Paris Echo/Sebastian Faulks

Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong made a huge impression on me as a First World War novel. It was well researched, moving, with a powerful story. I have never found his subsequent novels matched this. He is nonetheless an author with a wide and loyal readership up there with Julian Barnes and Ian [...]

October 2, 2018 // 0 Comments

Aiming off …

Earlier this week I went to a showing of the new ‘feature’ documentary Spitfire, made by Altitude Films, produced by Mark Stuart and directed by David Fairhead and Ant Palmer, in a small art-house style cinema screening at Chichester in West Sussex. As a small boy in the 1950s and beyond I [...]

August 24, 2018 // 0 Comments

To 1944 and back

This may sound a degree absurd from someone in their sixties with a general interest in military history but last week I made my first-ever research trip to Normandy as a member of a small touring group spending five days ‘doing’ the D-Day Landings and elements of the 1944 Allied campaign to [...]

July 8, 2018 // 0 Comments

France :A History from Gaul to de Gaulle / John Julius Norwich

I always have a lot of respect for writers of non fiction whose preparation involves a lot of research and who can nonetheless produce a final work that is concise. Norman Stone wrote a brilliant short history of the First World War, Neal McGregor a superb but short history of Germany and now John [...]

July 3, 2018 // 0 Comments

A recce in France

Over the past three decades, as an amateur enthusiast without significant expert in the subject, I have done a good deal of military history research in all the usual places – not least in Belgium/France, Italy and Gallipoli (WW1) and in France, Belgium and Portugal (the Duke of Wellington at [...]

June 16, 2018 // 0 Comments

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