Articles by Henry Elkins

About Henry Elkins

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

Stonehenge – potential new ‘discovery’

Trawling the newspaper websites overnight I came across this piece by David Leafe on the website of the Daily Mail and thought it worthy of possible interest to Rusters. It is all about the latest theory as to both the design and purpose of Stonehenge – see here – DAILY [...]

July 3, 2021 // 0 Comments

Quartered but safe/George MacDonald Fraser

Pursuing my interest in the less well known theatres of conflict of World War Two, I received this enthusiastic recommendation from a solicitor friend of mine. It’s a personal account by the author of the Flashman series of the Burma Campaign of 1946 and is extremely good. It dispelled many [...]

June 23, 2021 // 0 Comments

Operation Pedestal/Max Hastings

Pursuing my interest in the lesser known theatres of war in World War Two I read Max Hastings’ account of the fleet that battled to Malta in 1942 with great interest and enjoyment as it’s well researched and most readable. After significant defeats at Singapore and Tobruk in 1942, [...]

June 1, 2021 // 0 Comments

Great Lives/Harry Hopkins

Radio 4’s Great Lives can can be very variable. As often as not the subject is some female trail-blazer of whom I have never heard. Yesterday Matthew Parris presented an episode on Harry Hopkins advocated by Jonathan Dimbleby a respected historian of World War Two. Harry Hopkins was the [...]

May 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

Queen Elizabeth and the Spy in the Household/Channel 4

This was a typical Channel 4 documentary- long on revelation, short on evidence for it. The programme made two significant such revelations, namely that the Queen was complicit in the cover up of Anthony Blunt and his immunity from prosecution and, secondly, the spy delivered a hot dossier on the [...]

April 6, 2021 // 0 Comments

V2/Robert Harris

Popular historical fiction writer Robert Harris spent the lockdown researching this novel about the V2 rocket. There are two strands to the narrative. The novel begins with a V2 rocket hitting Warwick Court in London where Kay, a reconnaissance analyst for the RAF, is having an affaire with one of [...]

March 30, 2021 // 0 Comments

The Infiltrators /Norman Ohler

I have always been interested in the degree of complicity of the German people – das Volk – in Nazism and its crimes and conversely the resistance domestically to the regime. This readable and well-researched account of two such resistants – Harro Schultze-Boysen and his wife [...]

January 19, 2021 // 0 Comments

A first hand account

At noon midday this week on Thursday 17th December in Knightsbridge the auction house Bonham’s will be holding its latest auction of fine books, atlases, manuscripts and historical photographs. Included in the sale is the handwritten account of the famous siege of Rorke’s Drift in South [...]

December 15, 2020 // 0 Comments

In the Garden of Beasts/Erik Larson

This is the true story of the American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, appointed at the time of Adolf Hitler’s ascendancy to total power in 1933-44. Erik Larson (author) William Dodd was a mild-mannered history professor from Chicago who studied in Leipzig. He described himself as a [...]

December 9, 2020 // 0 Comments

The Dambusters /Channel 5

Last week Dan Snow presented a three-part series on the World War Two raid on the dams that protected the Ruhr Valley the industrial heartland of Germany. Snow like his father Peter on election night with his swingometer is given to somewhat histrionic hand gestures. He is not a calm presenter [...]

December 5, 2020 // 0 Comments

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England 33 New Zealand 19

November 16, 2025 // 0 Comments

Although England won comfortably I was not sure about their team but I’m here to talk about the All Blacks who are in transition. the so called experts say thete had never [...]
Quilter autumn internationals

November 9, 2025 // 0 Comments

À friend of mine something of a rugby aficionado sent me a Guardian article forecasting this England side might provide expansive rugby. I had my doubts as over the years I [...]
Fiorentina sack Pioli

November 5, 2025 // 0 Comments

With Fiorentina bottom of Serie a, it came as no surprise that head coach Stefano Pioli was sacked yesterday. Results have been terrible and last Saturday we lost 0-1 at home [...]
Annabelle Croft

November 2, 2025 // 0 Comments

The highlight of my sporting weekend was not the ATP tennis, not the sports on offer, but Annabelle Croft’s appearance on Michael Berkeley’s Radio 3 programme [...]
The Premiership

November 2, 2025 // 0 Comments

Who would have thought that Sunderland promoted in the play-offs would stand just one point behind Liverpool with a game in hand? It’s surely Arsenal’s to lose with their [...]