Sir Winston Churchill will feature on the new design of a banknote which will enter circulation in 2016, the Bank of England has announced. The wartime leader’s image is planned to feature on the reverse of the new £5 note, together with one of his most celebrated quotations. Churchill was chosen owing to his place as “a hero of the [...]
The Daimler DB18 Drophead Coupe transported Britain’s wartime leader between 1944 and 1949 and was used on his election trail.The Daimler DB18 Drophead Coupe transported Britain’s wartime leader between 1944 and 1949. It was built in Coventry in 1939, with coachwork by Carlton Carriage Company, and is one of only eight completed before war ended production. Four were destroyed by [...]
David Reynolds, professor of international history at Cambridge and fêted documentary-maker, is making a habit of asking BBC Four viewers to think anew about the Second World War. His last film, World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel, argued that Stalin’s bloody resistance to Hitler on the Eastern Front was where the war in Europe was really won [...]
He was best known for battling the Daleks as one of the best-loved Doctor Whos. But now it has been revealed that Jon Pertwee was a real-life secret agent years before he donned the Time Lord’s cape. The actor, who died in 1996 aged 76, was a senior intelligence agent during the Second World War and reported directly to Winston [...]
When I was a much younger me, prone to underthinking and new to so much of the history I now take for granted, I came across some extracts of some unkind Corelli Barnett thrashings where he was laying into some particular sacred cows of British military canon lore and it simply would not do. It must have been the Desert [...]
The procession took that most ancient road that runs from the Palace of Westminster to the steps of the cathedral of St Paul. It is a road that half the history of England seems to have taken, on its way to a crowning or to a public and ignoble death, to murder or be murdered, to raise revolt, to seek [...]
SS Report on Questions of Internal Security (12 August, 1943) This report concerns British prisoners in the Reich and the impression they make on the German people. According to numerous reports from various parts of the Reich, the presence in agriculture and industry of British prisoners raises a series of problems, which may become serious if they are neglected. We [...]
On a clear day, you can see 11 English and Welsh counties not to mention the Bristol Channel from this ridge. No wonder the men of ‘Jonah’ Patrol of 202 Battalion, Home Guard had their operational base up here in these Monmouthshire hills. Their accommodation was less spectacular, though. And I am sitting in it. Six men would have squeezed [...]
Thousands voted him the greatest Briton – but did they know about his views on Gandhi, gassing and Jews… I will not pretend that, if I had to choose between communism and nazism, I would choose communism. Speaking in the House of Commons, autumn 1937I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour [...]
Winston Churchill ordered the assassination of Benito Mussolini as part of a plot to destroy potentially compromising secret letters he had sent the Italian dictator, a leading French historian has suggested. Pierre Milza, an expert on fascist Italy, theorizes that the wartime prime minister may have wanted Mussolini dead to prevent the letters, in which Churchill expressed his admiration for [...]
87 shipwrecks, most from WWII, could leak oil near US, but no ‘ticking time bombs’May 22, 2013
Cold War cartography: Mapping where Soviets could – and could not – go in 1950′s AmericaMay 21, 2013
New monument honors ‘overlooked’ WWII aviators killed in training at Columbia baseMay 21, 2013
P-38 Lightning Crash Site at Siar IslandMay 21, 2013
WWI German submarine has underwater Lake Michigan graveMay 21, 2013
Billionaire Paul Allen gets V-2 rocket for aviation museum near SeattleMay 21, 2013
Pictures emerge of Field Marshal Montgomery visiting pivotal El Alamein battlefield 25 years after he defeated the GermansMay 21, 2013
Blown out of proportion? Student arrested for posing by Russian WWII memorial with an inflatable sex dollMay 21, 2013
Is it illegal to wear medals you weren’t awarded?May 21, 2013
A selection of impressive black and white photographs of that uneasy year 1943May 21, 2013
Fighter pilot reunited with tough little KittyhawkMay 21, 2013
2011: Intact German WW1 uboat found off IrelandMay 21, 2013
Rhidian Brook: my grandfather inspired my bestselling novelMay 21, 2013
Unthinkable? Putting the second world war to restMay 21, 2013
A wonderful tribute to veterans at the PixMay 21, 2013
Monument to the 1,200 Guardsmen, Kaliningrad, RussiaMay 20, 2013
Russia and Japan seek agreement to end WWIIMay 20, 2013
Top Ten United States Fighter Pilot Aces from WWIIMay 20, 2013
Save The Willow Run Bomber PlantMay 20, 2013
New Dam Busters film on hold!May 20, 2013
