Stuarts, Salford, the BBC and Bawdiness I'd been asked to do an interview about The Jacobites' Apprentice at the new BBC studios in Salford.The day before, I took a phone call from a friend who asked me whether I thought they'd ask me about Salford's Mayoral candidates. I was non-plussed, and then realised that a former colleague, Ian Stewart, was himself a candidate for the elected mayor's position. It was therefore a "Stuart" in-joke. Anyway, … [Read more...]
Spanish Civil War
David Ebsworth’s second novel, The Assassin’s Mark, is a Christie-esque thriller set on a battlefield tour bus towards the end of the Spanish Civil War. Propaganda in the Spanish Civil War At the beginning of December 1938, Victoria Station, in London, saw the strange sight of an army returning from war. Thousands of people waited for the train from Newhaven and the disembarkation of 305 volunteers from the British Battalion of the … [Read more...]
Zulu War – the Legacy
The Kraals of Ulundi and the Nelson Mandela Link In November 2013, I was able to make the trip to KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa to check out the locations for book number three, The Kraals of Ulundi: a Novel of the Zulu War. Then, just a few days after our return to the UK, came the news of Nelson Mandela’s death – and several people e-mailed me to ask whether there was a direct link between this desperately sad event and the story of … [Read more...]
Waterloo – Marianne Tambour and the Music of Battle
I hope that there are sections of The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour that readers can "hear" as they turn the pages, and particularly those that detail some of the French Napoleonic army's music. Singing and band music were an integral part of army life, so here we have some of the tunes, the songs, the drum and trumpet calls that would have been everyday sounds for the Emperor's soldiers. So here's the Reveille - the Diane - that would … [Read more...]
Spanish Civil War – the Costa Blanca
Jávea (Xàbia), on Spain's Costa Blanca, has the distinction of being one of the last places to be occupied by Franco's fascists during the final days of the that country's Civil War (1936-1939). But it had seen action much earlier too. Jávea, then just a small fishing village on the Mediterranean coast, was in Republican territory and an airfield with two runways was built close to Camí Cabanes, an obvious target for Nationalist forces aided … [Read more...]
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