The dramatic Allied failure in the Norway campaign of April 1940 destroyed Neville Chamberlain as British PM and, ironically, elevated the fiasco’s architect, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Spencer Churchill, to wartime leadership. …
Articles by: "Stephen Loosley"
The war in Vietnam is widely perceived to have been the first television war, fought not only on the battlefield but also in the living rooms of America (and Australia). If that thesis is correct, …
For most James Bond devotees, M is the reassuring, somewhat fatherly figure in Ian Fleming’s novels who reluctantly deploys his favourite agent in dangerous, if not deadly, places. Bernard Lee played M wonderfully in the …
Generations of Australians have been told that the Australian Light Horse Regiments, which distinguished themselves from the Sinai to Syria during the Great War, were not Cavalry. They were Mounted Infantry. Jean Bou, an historian …
The great Russian writer, Vladimir Nabokov, probably described VI Lenin best, when he observed that the Bolshevik leader’s ideology was like a pail of milk of human kindness, with a dead rat at the bottom. …
Mike Carlton is now distinguished by his own efforts with the pen as an able chronicler of the Royal Australian Navy, in two World Wars and in the brief interregnum of peace, 1919–1939. In both …
There’s a Chinese perspective that holds there are two kinds of time. Looking back is far more valuable than looking ahead, for it’s by looking back that lessons are understood and appropriate conclusions drawn. So …
The Centenary Commemoration of the Great War continues to unearth real treasures from our military history, none more mesmerising than this Exhibition of photographs taken by Australian Diggers, Sailors and Airmen in most theatres of …
The Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s 1932-1943, edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky. Fitzroy MacLean’s superb autobiography, Eastern Approaches, is most famously recalled for his exploits in the Balkans, during the Second …
Beyond domestic concerns, which I wrote about last week, the second term Obama administration has to address a number of challenging international issues. High on the list of serious problems is Iran’s continuing effort to …
On 6 November 2012, President Barack Obama won a convincing election victory. The Democratic incumbent beat the Republican challenger, Governor Mitt Romney, carrying virtually all of the battleground states that were the subject of serious …