Apologies...

(or, 'What on earth have you been doing with your life?')

I’ve just had one of my subscribers send me an email asking why there hasn’t been anything from my pen for the blog recently. With horror I noticed that my last offering was my review of David Howarth’s marvellous ‘Adventurers’ a month ago. It has since been published in The Critic which, if you don’t currently have a subscription is a shame that you should rectify immediately: you’ll find it a regular monthly brain sharpener. Here it the review:

So what’s my excuse? In the first instance it has been work: I don’t earn enough from writing (I’m not complaining, simply stating a hard fact) so am still deeply involved in the world of business, where I’ve been for the past 23-years after deciding not to pursue the proffered academic career following my PhD. I’ve never regretted that decision nor the mix in my lifestyle: half research and writing and half ‘real’ work. I’ve seemed to make it work, and enjoy both. One certainly pays for the other…

I have two other reviews on their way, for Aspects of History, one on Tom Whipple’s The Battle of the Beams and the other Robert Taylor’s Operation Chiffon. You’ll see them posted here in due course.

I also forgot: I had a marvellous week wandering around Istanbul and Gallipoli a week or two back with my friend James Kerr and a group of friends.

I’ve also been finishing off a couple of books. This, written with General The Lord Dannatt, is being published in September. We’re launching it at James Holland and Al Murray’s wonderful “We Have Ways” festival in Bicester on the weekend of 8-10 September. If you are interested in the Second World War, this is the festival to attend. I’ve loved sharing the writing of this book, and hope you’ll all go and buy it in large numbers when it arrives on the bookstores.

I’ve also got this resume of 1945 in Burma being published in July. I’ll be talking about it in York the evening before the annual Kohima memorial service in early July, organised by the ever brilliant Kohima Educational Trust.

There are a couple of other projects underway that I look forward to telling you about in due course. One very exciting venture is support to a wonderful young writer who is writing a book for young people about a Gurkha subaltern caught up in the war in Burma in 1942 and 1943. It is very exciting: more of this anon.

Another has been further work on my account of the traitor in SOE, Henri Déricourt, which is been the subject of two of my blogs before. I’ve been dabbling in the research for this for over a decade: hopefully the next year or two will see this conclude. Its a fascinating story.

I’ve also been enjoying collating and editing the diaries of Harry Burrell, a young Gurkha officer posted to India and Burma between 1942 and 1945, who took with him a colour cine camera. The work on this is nearly complete. The diaries will be published by Penguin in 2024.

Finally, an exciting new venture called guidl, an app designed to get the very best historical tours by the very best historians onto a single site, is also happily consuming some of my time. Its a fabulous idea; we have an incredible team and the support of so many superb historians and guides has been overwhelming. There’ll be looks more here on this subject in due course.

Well, that’s what I’ve been doing. What’s your excuse?