The Great Siege of Malta (1565)
On 29 May 1453, after seven weeks of siege warfare the city of Constantinople fell to the Muslim Ottoman forces of the Sultan Mehmed II, …
Battle of Lepanto
The onset of the Reformation and religious schism had divided and seriously weakened a once unified Christendom and left it vulnerable to …
Anne Boleyn Part Two: The Fallen Idol
Late in the afternoon of 31 May 1533, in what would be a great procession through the streets of the city, England’s new Queen, Anne …
Anne Boleyn Part One: The Goggle-Eyed Whore
Anne Boleyn was born in Norfolk sometime in 1501, the second daughter of the diplomat Thomas Boleyn and his wife Anne Howard. As a result …
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima
On the morning of 19 February 1945, men of the United States Marine Corps landed on the small island of Iwo Jima, an eerie place, flat and …
Galileo: An Inquisitive Mind
Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, then part of the Florentine Republic, on 15 February, 1564, the eldest of six children. Raised a devout …
Churchill’s Darkest Hour
On 9 April 1940, after seven months of inertia referred to disparagingly as the ‘Phoney War’, German forces invaded Norway. In doing so …
Gordon Riots: No Popery!
In 1778, the Whig politician Sir George Savile moved in Parliament his Bill intended to remove some of the penalties imposed upon Catholics …
Pilgrimage of Grace
By the autumn of 1536 it appeared that the great crises of Henry VIII’s reign were at an end, Katherine of Aragon was dead, Anne Boleyn …
Francisco Pizarro and the Conquest of the Incas
Francisco Pizarro was born in 1474, in the town of Trujillo Caceres in Spain, the illegitimate son of an Army Officer and a woman of no …
Hernan Cortes: Montezuma’s Nightmare
On 12 October 1492, Christopher Columbus planted the flag of Catholic Spain on an island he named San Salvador. He had inadvertently, for …
Peasants’ Revolt
In June 1348 at Melcombe Bay in Dorset, bubonic plague arrived upon the shores of England. The Black Death as it was known had already …