Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Ever heard of Father Gapon?
April 4th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I didn’t know the name at all when it was mentioned in conversation with an American friend who is more familiar than me on Russian history. Wikipedia states: “Georgy Apollonovich Gapon[a] (17 February [O.S. 5 February] 1870 –10 April [O.S.28 March] 1906) was a Russian Orthodox priest of Ukrainian descent and a popular working-class leader before the 1905 Russian Revolution. Father Gapon is mainly […]
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Are we really living in the worst of times?
February 18th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
So many conversations that I have about the current state of the world involve people suggesting that we are living in the worst of times. But is this really the case? It is true that we recently had a global pandemic that killed millions, that there are wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, the Congo and […]
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A review of the new book “Naples 1944” by Keith Lowe
January 21st, 2025 by Roger Darlington
My Italian mother was born in Naples in 1920 and lived there until she married my British father – an RAF fighter pilot – in 1946. So she lived through all the events described in this fascinating book. She died in 1999 and how I would have loved to discuss with her the contents of […]
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When and where was the world’s first railway line?
January 18th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
The world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives ran between Stockton and Darlington in the north-east of England. Since my family name is Darlington (although I’ve only visited the town once – in 1983), this historical event has always had a special resonance for me. The line was officially opened on 27 September 1825. […]
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Which British politician was responsible for the introduction of the world’s first zebra crossing?
January 12th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
The answer might surprise you – as it did me when the question was recently put to me by a friend over dinner. The answer is Jim Callaghan who, at the time, was a junior minister in the Ministry of Transport in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour Government and subsequently became Prime Minister himself. In 1948, […]
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A review of the ambitious work “Why Empires Fall”
October 27th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
John Rapley is a political economist at the University of Cambridge and Peter Heather is Chair of Medieval History at King’s College, London. Together they have written a work which essentially argues that currently the Western Empire faces the kind of challenges that led to the collapse of the Roman Empire around 500 AD. The […]
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How many Germanys are there?
August 22nd, 2024 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just returned from my eighth visit to Germany – a short break in Bonn, Aachen and Cologne. This set me thinking again about the idea of different Germanys. At the end of the Thirty Years’ War in the mid 17th century, there were some 2,000 German statelets. After the Congress of Vienna in 1815, […]
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A review of “Bismarck’s War” by Rachel Chrastil – an account of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871
August 11th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
The Franco-Prussian War took place between 19 July 1870 and 28 January 1871. At the beginning, it was a conflict between the Second French Empire led by Emperor Napoleon III and the North German Confederation led by the King of Bavaria. However, following early defeat of French forces at Sedan, Napoleon resigned and the Second […]
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A review of “The Great Empires Of Asia” edited by Jim Masselos
April 29th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
Long before European powers encircled the globe, Asia was home to some of the greatest empires ever seen. This excellent work describes seven of those empires covering a wide range of geography and time. It does so in a concise and readable manner with each chapter having a short table of key dates and a […]
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How good is your Chinese history?
February 20th, 2024 by Roger Darlington
This week, it’s half-term in the town where my two granddaughters live and I’ve agreed to entertain each of them for a day. Today was the turn of the younger who is seven. I asked her what she’d learned at school recently and she told me that they had been studying the Shang Dynasty. Now […]
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