In 2015, a rust-weathered steel spire was erected on the skyline above the City of Lincoln. It is 102 feet, more than 31 metres, high – by no coincidence equivalent to the wingspan of a Second World War Lancaster bomber. …

In 2015, a rust-weathered steel spire was erected on the skyline above the City of Lincoln. It is 102 feet, more than 31 metres, high – by no coincidence equivalent to the wingspan of a Second World War Lancaster bomber. …
This is HMS M.33, a relic of another time – yet a time of not so very long ago – and of almost-forgotten battles. M.33 was a monitor, essentially a floating gun platform. Designed to operate in shallow waters, close…
It was the only time I ever saw our dour, ill-tempered, Polish foreman remotely happy. As a student one hot summer long ago, I had a labouring job on a new section of motorway. It stretched into the distance, an…
Say “Dunkirk”* to anyone with a modest knowledge of Britain’s recent history and probably the least they will do is to nod sagely; Dunkirk, ‘the miracle of Dunkirk’ or the ‘Dunkirk spirit’, is part of modern British mythology. If you…
South West England has two main draw-backs: it is popular and, as it’s on the west, it can suffer from wetness – particularly at its extremities. Other than that, it has pretty much everything, including mystery, prehistory, history, cuteness, grand…
Part 2 – Lorenz and legacy Enigma was only part of the Bletchley Park story. As early as 1940, listening stations began to pick up enciphered teleprinter messages. These worked in a completely different way to messages enciphered on an…
Part 1 – Enigma and Ultra This is Bletchley Park. To all intents and purposes, it’s a nondescript, somewhat ugly, large Victorian mansion and estate just north of London. But what went on at Bletchley Park was extraordinary: it changed…
Having been weaned on tales of Douglas Bader, Stamford Tuck and Guy Gibson, I get quite excited visiting places like Duxford. IWM Duxford is home to most of the Imperial War Museum’s collection of rather large exhibits – mainly aircraft. …
The Needles, enormous 100-feet (30-metre) high chalk and flint stacks off the most westerly point of the Isle of Wight, are part of the Island’s iconography, and one of Britain’s most recognisable coastal features. They are an exposed eroded section…
Something like 3 million US citizens passed through the United Kingdom during the Second World War. The Cambridge American Cemetery commemorates almost 9,000 Americans who died while based here, or en route, in those years of conflict. They died at…
For four years, the armies had slugged it out. Millions had died and most people had forgotten what started it all in the first place, or what they were actually fighting for. It took much, much longer to conclude the…
15 September is Battle of Britain Day. It commemorates the legendary air battle that took place in Britain’s skies, mainly – though not exclusively – over southern England, during the long hot summer and early autumn of 1940. The conflict…
Captain James Bigglesworth, known as Biggles, absent-mindedly tapped a fresh cigarette on the back of his hand and anxiously eyed the grey eastern sky. Algy – the Honourable Algernon Montgomery Lacey – was long overdue from patrol over the lines…
The sectioned remains of a World War Two vintage German submarine, or U-boat (from Unterseeboot – undersea boat), lie next to Woodside ferry terminal at Birkenhead, on the west bank of the River Mersey. In April 1945, Hitler’s Third Reich was…