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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

The battle of the Vercors Plâteau

I have always had the greatest interest in the lesser known theatres of battle of World War Two but until I saw National Geographic’s excellent documentary on the Vercors Plâteau I had never heard of this engagement in July and August 1945. To the rallying call of Charles de Gaulle the FFI [...]

November 9, 2023 // 0 Comments

Das Boot

The best testament I can give to Das Boot is that I was really tired last night but managed to watch both final episodes between 9-11 pm. The plot is multi-layered. Klaus Hoffmann (Rick Okon), war hero and U-boat commander from a distinguished naval family, is complicit in a plot to topple Hitler [...]

October 26, 2023 // 0 Comments

The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys/Jack Jewers

Historical fiction has become a popular genre with writers like C.J. Samson and his Shardlake novels set in the reign of Henry VIII leading the way. In some respects these are easy novels to write – as you do not have to invent a whole cast of characters – but (in other respects) [...]

September 25, 2023 // 0 Comments

A Nazi Conspiracy/Brad Meltzer & Josh Mensch

This is an account of an alleged Nazi conspiracy to assassinate the Big Three (Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) at the Tehran Conference in 1943. I say “alleged” as there may have been no conspiracy but a ruse by the Soviets to scare President Roosevelt into staying not at the US [...]

September 6, 2023 // 0 Comments

University Challenge’s New Quizmaster

In its 70 year history University Challenge has only had 3 quizmasters: Bamber Gascoigne, Jeremy Paxman and now the BBC’s media editor Amol Rajan. He made his debut last night in a contest between Trinity College and the University of Manchester which ended in a tie with 175 points respectively. [...]

July 18, 2023 // 0 Comments

A Bridge Too Far

I nicknamed this Richard Attenborough film An Hour Too Long as length is one of its problems. The other is the assemblage of stars – Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Lawrence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, Liv Ullmann, Robert Redford, James Caan, Elliot Gould, Maximilian Schell, Hardy Kruger, Edward [...]

April 2, 2023 // 0 Comments

The Other Side of the Hill

The title of the book is taken from the Duke of Wellington who always stressed the importance of knowing what your enemy is up to. The writer is the distinguished military historian and strategist Basil Liddell Hart, who advocated fast-moving armoured divisions striking quickly and deeply into the [...]

January 28, 2023 // 0 Comments

Stars and spies/ Christopher Andrew and Julius Green

There is always the difficulty that any historical account will be so dense and detailed that the reader cannot easily absorb it. No such difficulty here as the authors in tracing the interrelationship between the arts and espionage always keep the narrative the right side of entertaining. They [...]

January 11, 2023 // 0 Comments

The Guns at Last Light/Rick Atkinson

The Guns at Last Light is the final volume of the Liberation Trilogy detailing the American military World War Two campaigns of North Africa, Sicily and Italy and in this book the Normandy Landings and their aftermath. It is immensely detailed: a blow by blow, day by day, account with exhaustive [...]

December 17, 2022 // 0 Comments

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