World War I - The Road to War

 by Tony O'Donnell

 Introduction

 Even after 112 years we still have much emotion invested in our view of WW1, The Great War

Because of that I’m not sure it is possible to make an unemotional case for non-involvement. If you could do so, then what was the sacrifice for? We already doubt that sacrifice because we know what happened in 1939.

To compound that by saying we should/could have avoided involvement might be seen as pouring more futility on that sacrifice.

So we have to put aside what we know of the horrors of  the years 1914-18 and of what followed in 1939-45. We have to try and stand in the shoes of those living through the events of July/August 1914. Knowing only what they knew, and very importantly, trying to understand their perceptions of the world. Perceptions that were very much shaped by events and emotions of the previous 50 years. What I hope to show is that the road to war was a long one, but unavoidable and needed only a spark.

On Britain’s declaration of war Margot Asquith, wife of the P.M, wrote:” How did it, how could it have happened.”

Watergate

 by Richard Betts

Richard Nixon relinquished the office of President of the United States on 9 August 1974. Though 4 presidents before this had died of natural causes while in office, and 4 had been assassinated, no other president had resigned. Why should Nixon resign? There were notable achievements, not least significant détente both with China and the Soviet Union, the latter despite tensions during the Yom Kippur War. And though, like Lyndon Johnson before him, he was heavily criticised for protracted American involvement in Vietnam, Nixon did finally bring home the last US troops based there. But reputation or not, his margin of victory in the 1968 presidential election had been very slim, and in that year he became the first president in 120 years to take up office at a time when both houses of Congress, ie the Senate and the House of Representatives, were controlled by the opposition; in this instance, the Democrats.  So Nixon feared defeat in 1972. But he won the election very comfortably. It wasn’t the electorate who brought him down. It was Watergate. Having won in 1972, he was then on a tortuous slippery slope from which there was no escape. Though he hung on tenaciously until 1974, Watergate dragged him slowly into a pit from which there was no escape.

 

CHRISTINE GRANVILLE (KRYSTYNA SKARBEK)

by Linda Hansford

 

 

CHURCHILL’S’ QUOTE

 

‘In the high ranges of Secret Service work the actual facts in many cases were in every respect equal to the most fantastic inventions of romance and melodrama’.

 

So who was Christine Granville?

 

She was known as Churchill’s favourite spy, the first female agent to serve in the field and longest serving agent of WW2.  She allegedly inspired Ian Fleming’s character Vesper Lynd in Casino Royale, although it is uncertain whether they ever met in person.

History of Geology by Jeremy Cranmer

Should Britain have stayed neutral in World War I?

 

by Lester Cowling

World War One is the byword for bravery, patriotism and ultimate self sacrifice. The only consolation for us is we won….well maybe.                                            

★    Around 22 million died

★    About the same number were left wounded, maimed or mentally damaged

★    The war lasted almost four and a half years. On average 230 soldiers perished every hour.

 And it inevitably lead into World War Two - the second half of the same conflict - where the suffering was even more horrific. 

Historians are now increasingly divided - should Britain have sat it out - been neutral? Dominic Sandbrook, Margaret Macmillan, Niall Ferguson have all expressed this view.

Berengaria, Queen of the English, Duchess of the Normans and Aquitanians and Countess of Maine

by Des Derrien

I am going to talk about Queen Berengaria, the most obscure queen of England. She did not call herself queen of England, but queen of the English, etc. She was queen of the area that her husband ruled rather than a precisely defined country as we know England nowadays. Please try to imagine a wedding taking place in May in Cyprus. Not on the beach, but in the chapel of St George in Limassol. It is the year 1191. The groom is 34-year-old King Richard, later to be known as Lionheart, and the bride is 18-year-old Berengaria. 

A Brief History of early Germany