Rob Attar: Many of your previous books have focused on the big campaigns and the most famous events of the Second World War. So what drew you to the relatively unknown Operation Biting?
Max Hastings: Because I’m getting a bit older and a bit slower, I want to focus on miniatures rather than the big stuff. So I’ve been picking small episodes that seem to illustrate important realities about bigger things – and which are also jolly good stories in their own right.
The Bruneval Raid [Operation Biting] in February 1942 was a British success story at a time when not much else was going well. And it involved all sorts of fascinating personalities – starting, of course, with Churchill. At that stage of the war, when so many battles were being lost, he always wanted to keep raids going on the occupied coast of Europe. This was partly to remind the Americans that we were still in the war business, partly to cheer up the British people, and also partly to serve some very important objectives.
What were those objectives?
What was at stake really mattered. Bomber Command, during its attacks into Europe, was suffering more and more from German radar-directed fighters. The British were catching a new sort of radar they didn’t know much about, which the Germans called the Würzburg-Gerät.
The genius of British scientific intelligence, Reg Jones, always liked to think that he could work out anything just by thinking about it long enough – but in this case, both he and the Telecommunications
Research Establishment felt there was no substitute for getting a look at the real thing. And suddenly they saw this aerial photograph, in December 1941, of a radar station near Bruneval, about 12 miles away from Le Havre. They could see this black thing down there, which they were pretty sure was a Würzburg antenna.
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Denne historien er fra July 2024-utgaven av BBC History UK.
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The Long Road Back - The Election Was Tough for the Conservatives but the Past Holds Clues on How Parties Can Return From the Brink
It’s election night 1997, and Jeremy Paxman is grilling Tory grandee Cecil Parkinson. “You’re the chairman of a fertiliser firm,” the famously pugnacious broadcaster asked Parkinson. “How deep is the mess you’re in?” Twenty-seven years later, as the Conservative party comes to terms with another landslide defeat, it’s worth applying the same question to the present day. How does this result compare with previous devastating losses – not only those suffered by the Tories themselves, but also those experienced by the other major parties? And what can history teach us about the tools that politicians use to dig themselves out of the dung heap and set themselves back on the road to power?
"We Need a Meaningful Story for the New Generation - Our Composite Union"- There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course we'll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed.
What a summer it’s been so far, with an astonishing election result. There has been much talk of national renewal, and in due course we’ll see what that means. But it felt like a watershed. The new prime minister’s dad was a toolmaker, his mum a nurse; the cabinet is majority comprehensive-educated, with more alumni of Parrs Wood High School than of Eton. Among commentators – not just on the left – there’s been a growing feeling that 14 years of Tory rule, compounded by Brexit, have undermined what the great medieval historian Ibn Khaldun called asabiyyah: group feeling – the glue that makes societies work. And watching TV on election night, I found myself wondering whether, like sediment settling in a glass, the time has finally arrived for a new national narrative
Parthian Chicken - Eleanor Barnett recreates an ancient Roman dish that borrowed flavours from a rival neighbouring empire in the Middle East
According to ancient Roman natural philosopher Pliny the Elder, Apicius was “the most gluttonous gorger of all spendthrifts”. The cookbook attributed to him, known simply as Apicius or as De Re Coquinaria (On the Art of Cooking), is one of the oldest collections of recipes surviving from antiquity. Its author may have been Marcus Gavius Apicius, a Roman gourmet of the first century AD who reputedly travelled all the way from Campania to Libya on the hunt for the largest, juiciest prawns.
Eastern Promises- Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China
Lured by rich trading prospects, from the 17th to the 19th centuries Britain attempted to cultivate relations with China sometimes successfully, but often disastrously. Kerry Brown explores the troubled but ultimately vital links between two ambitious realms
The King They Couldn't Kill -Want to know why Henry VII is remembered as an intensely suspicious king, wracked by paranoia? The answer, writes Nathen Amin, lies in his death-defying rise to power
Henry’s wary nature is typically attributed to his shaky claim to the throne. The first Tudor monarch was unable to escape the taunt that he was a usurper with no right to call himself king. In fact, his renowned paranoia was the inevitable consequence of a traumatic youth – a trait ingrained long before he harboured ambitions to wear a crown. If we delve deeper into Henry’s background, we can draw a fuller picture of one of our most circumspect of monarchs – one that might elicit sympathy for a long misunderstood king.
The Spy Who Hoodwinked Hitler - Dummy tanks at El Alamein. Bogus generals in Algiers. Sham armies on D-Day. All were ruses masterminded by Dudley Clarke. Robert Hutton tells the story of the British soldier who made an art form of duping the Nazis
Examining the reconnaissance photos, Behrendt was convinced that the Allies weren’t in any hurry. They were constructing some kind of pipeline towards the southern end of their line, probably to carry water, which was barely halfway completed. There were supply dumps appearing in the south as well – always a telltale clue about where an attack would come. True, a large number of trucks were parked at the northern end of the line, about 25 miles back from the front, but they hadn’t moved for weeks.
"People have achieved all kinds of crazy things at the age of 18″
ALICE LOXTON talks to Danny Bird about her book on 18 individuals who left an indelible mark on British history before they were out of their teens
A Pole apart
ROGER MOORHOUSE is absorbed by a little-known but politically significant Polish princess whose life encompassed the major events of the later 18th and 19th centuries
Medieval England's p olitical miracle
From Magna Carta to parliament, taxation to the law courts, the 13th and 14th centuries laid the foundations for the modern British state
THE GENIUS IN THE SHADOWS
Æthelstan is one of the greatest of all Anglo-Saxon monarchs. So why, asks Michael Wood, does the first king of the English remain so fiendishly elusive?
