My new book - coming soon!

Publication date (UK): 4 June

Available for pre-order

You'd think that all the chateaux in France would have disappeared along with their aristocratic owners during the Revolution.
Not the case, of course. And in some cases, the aristocrats still own them. Though not this one, the Chateau de Beauregard, a local favourite of ours.

More reader comments on THESE ISLES:
A great book with a lot of wee nuggets of history that even the most well-read will enjoy.
A terrific achievement.
Enjoying your book These Isles very much.

A bell used as a gas alarm, December 1916.

111 years ago, on the 22nd of April 1915, the German army used chlorine gas for the first time during the Second Battle of Ypres. Fleeing the unfamiliar grey-green cloud, the allied soldiers broke rank leaving an over 7km gap in the line. #otd #history 🗃️

I had the opportunity to confront Pete Hegseth's bigoted spiritual mentor, Pastor Doug Wilson, and call him out on his history of hate, his misreading of the Bible, his hijacking of Jesus, and his cosplay Crusading.

It was worth it.

How Different Countries Teach History YouTube video by Foil Arms and Hog

😂😂😂
youtube.com/watch?v=vQvh...

In the 1920s there was debate about whether Great War monuments should be practical or just commemorative.
This one, in Hetton-le-Hole, Durham, "to the memory of the fallen sailors and soldiers in the above war", clearly falls into the practical category.

As @spyhistorian.bsky.social notes - the spread of the 'Spanish' Influenza Pandemic can absolutely be attributed to the movement of soldiers during the First World War.

It's also worth remembering that one of the first forms of mandatory innoculation was within George Washington's army for smallpox

The blue plaque for Louis Le Prince near Leeds Bridge. Le Prince was born in Metz, France in 1841. He came to Leeds in 1866 after meeting John Whitley at Leipzig University. Louis married John's sister Elizabeth. /1

Historians call out 'disgraceful claptrap' on Scottish station's Bannockburn display HISTORIANS have reacted with disbelief to a display at a Scottish train station that claims Robert the Bruce was a “Scottish independence party…

Looks like an outbreak of Amateur Historian Madness (AHM) in Gleneagles, Perthshire. www.thenational.scot/news/2603740...

Read Some History, Lindsey Some lessons from the past

Spot on.

open.substack.com/pub/gerardde...

Across south west France there are many roadside memorials to civilians, including Resistance members, executed by German troops as they raced north in the weeks after D-Day 1944.
This one, to 21-year-old Résistant Roger Dugas, is at Souffrignac, in the Charente.

Photo shows a heap of older style phones with the text “Planned obsolescence is now outlawed in France. It is a crime to intentionally reduce the lifespan of a product to force customers to replace it.”

Love France 🇫🇷 They understand the importance of the battery life of a Nokia 3310

Nobody asked! Yet this was hardly a low-level, low-risk appointment.

The appointment of Mandelson (payoff for services rendered?) was a gamble that didn’t come off. My suspicion is that they didn’t want to be told the result of the vetting at the time so they could later deny all knowledge.

More than 350,000 hectares of French forest was cut down to supply the insatiable demands of the First World War - trenches, huts, railways, crates, fuel.
So much timber was exported from Britain that the Forestry Commission was set up in 1919.

Kent Police Museum displays World War One sergeant's Victoria Cross Sgt Harry Wells's posthumous honour, after

The Victoria Cross of Sgt Harry Wells of the Royal Sussex Regiment who was killed at the Battle of Loos, Northern France in 1915 to go display at the Kent Police Museum in Faversham. 👇
BBC News - Museum displays WW1 sergeant's Victoria Cross
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Crowded large auditorium at the British Library, Rebecca, Sofia, Saara on stage with Pharaohs and Empresses on screen behind

Busy house for the first @histfest.bsky.social event of the weekend! Getting inspired to read more historical fiction, and feeling very jealous of Sofia Robleda and Saara El-Arifi's overseas research trips. Why did I decide to write about 1880s Shoreditch and Deptford 😭

And the long wall down the side, which I didn’t photograph, is long stretch of beautiful stonework. Some modern places round here use “cheat” cladding, but this is the real thing.

The 17th-century Aisled Barn located on the grounds of Shibden Hall in Halifax, West Yorkshire. The barn is part of the Shibden Hall estate, a historic manor house dating back to 1420. It is a Grade II listed building that originally served as a farm building and workshop. The site is famously associated with the diarist Anne Lister, known as "Gentleman Jack," who lived in the main hall.

🧵Back to Shibden Hall where the Aisled Barn is a Grade II* listed early 17th-century structure that now houses part of the West Yorkshire Folk Museum. Built around 1600 (though first recorded in 1677), it is thought one of the finest examples of an aisled barn or laithe in the

A diversion into the Second World War for us this morning.

We had the opportunity to save two wooden bunks that had been built into a brick Air Raid Shelter in 1938, just down the road from us in Bury St Edmunds.

If householders earned more than £300 per year they had to…

1/

New supermarkets are generally pretty functional buildings. Not this one so much.
I don’t know if it was a requirement of this Dordogne town’s council, but the new Brantome Aldi has a lovely pierres apparentes finish.

Lunch in Brantôme - followed by a visit to the town’s new Aldi.

My day so far. Yours?

Sorry, but I cannot believe any civil servant would override a failed security vetting for such a senior and sensitive appointment without at the very least referring it to their Secretary of State.

(And maybe I should add that the word it offered me wasn’t even the one I was looking for).

(Obviously, that sort of thing is irritating, but it’s beyond alarming that our political leaders are rushing to put our whole lives at the mercy of AI)

Not everyone was pleased, it seems.

A demarcation line was drawn across France in 1940, separating Vichy (“free”) France from the Nazi-occupied zone - and dividing communities.
These concrete posts in La Rochebeaucourt are original, but a few years ago someone restored the barrier and signs.

I asked CoPilot for a term I couldn’t remember and it gave me the word, naming the academic who coined it.
When I asked for a source, it admitted there was no record of him using the term, let alone coining it!