Author Archives

  • Take a Hike at Hadrian’s Wall

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    Hadrian’s wall stretched a full 80 miles across the province in Britannia, from Mais, the fort at Bowness on Solway in the West to Segundum, the fort at Wallsend in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the East. Construction began in 122BC, and when finished the wall stood 10ft wide and 13ft high and was replete with forts, gateways, observation towers and a defensive ditch running in front.

  • Remembering the Blitz

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    Reading the papers over the weekend, I could not help but be reminded that this week sees the 80th anniversary of the Blitz, the German bombing campaign against Great Britain. It began late in the afternoon of 7 September 1940, when 300 German bombers flew in over London to attack the docks in the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing and was to last 8 months.

  • The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: The last work manual you’ll ever need.

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    is to my regret, as a student of classics, that I have taken so long to read the meditations of the Roman Emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius. Partly because they are a rather well-known and interesting piece of classical literature that I somehow managed miss while at university, but mainly because I would have found them useful insights as I started to navigate my way through the modern day world of work.

  • The Battle of Dorking

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    Have you ever been to a quiet, peaceful and unexciting place and pictured it in your mind as the scene of a colossal disaster? This is the imaginative journey that Sir George Tomkyns Chesney was inviting his readers to make with his 1871 novella The Battle of Dorking. As a high-ranking army officer with a keen interest in politics, he had become concerned about the fragility of Britain’s defences and the complacency of the British public at a time of turbulence in Europe and he decided that creative fiction was the means by which to sound his warning.