Vichy France

 

by Lester Cowling

We generally have a benign of image of wartime France - the Resistance; RAF Lysanders landing SOE agents in torch-lit fields; bizarre, coded announcements on the BBC, De Gaulle steadfastly leading the Free French from London.

 The eighties sitcom ‘Allo, ‘Allo was a hit here and in France. Laughter helps the healing process.

 It parodied an earlier BBC drama about the Resistance called Secret Army.

 But Secret Army wasn’t set in France. It was set in Belgium.

 And maybe that was because the real story of how the French reacted to the German invasion was a bit more complicated - and not at all funny.

The Mycenaean Civilisation

 

by Mary Cantrille

Late Bronze Age

Timeline:

Minoan period:  3500 BC to 1100 BC (declining from 1450 BC)

Mycenaean period:  1600 BC to 1100 BC

Dark Ages: 1100 BC to 800 BC

Classical Greek period: 800 BC to 200 BC

The Mycenaean era was the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilisation in mainland Greece, noted for its palatial states, urban organisation and writing system – Linear B

The Mycenaean civilisation ranged from mainland Greece to Aegean islands to Western Anatolia. Named after Mycenae, the hilltop palace in the Peloponnese.