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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 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

In Our Time/Wilfred Owen

One of my favourite wireless programmes is In Our Time presented by Melvyn Bragg at 9-00 on Radio 4 every Thursday. The topic varies weekly and Bragg assembles a team of academics well-qualified to discuss it. Yesterday’s programme featured the World War poet Wilfred Owen. My connection with [...]

October 30, 2022 // 0 Comments

Getting it right beats how we’d like it to be

As a columnist on the Rust I am sometimes reminded of a conversation that I had eons ago with an elderly relative on the rather broad subject of which pastimes or subjects individuals take up as hobbies, interests and/or life-long obsessions and the reasons why they do. In these days of increased [...]

October 29, 2022 // 0 Comments

Rise of the Nazis/The Downfall

I watched my recording of the first part of this series yesterday. It’s a documentary in the modern mould: actors silently depicting the major personages; a young female historian from a diverse background. Heavyweight historian Sir Richard Evans presents it. It begins in 1944 with Adolf Hitler [...]

October 12, 2022 // 0 Comments

Act of Oblivion/Robert Harris

Critics have hailed Robert Harris’ latest novel as his best since Fatherland.   It’s historical fiction. Charles II, on being restored to the throne, issued a blanket pardon to all who fought for Parliament except those responsible for his father’s death known as the Regicides. Two such [...]

September 13, 2022 // 0 Comments

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