Editor of Lapsed Historian, John Bull is a journalist and a historian whose interests cover everything from the Classics through to the history of computing. He has a particular affection for obscure moments in history that have had a big impact, but which are today otherwise forgotten. In addition to writing about history, he also writes about London Transport for London Reconnections and on football for .
In 1944 Group Captain James Stagg was given an almost impossible task by General Dwight D Eisenhower. He was asked to determine the right conditions for D-Day and to predict a day on which they’d exist.
Given both its cast (which includes Brad Pitt) and the writing credentials behind it, Fury has been attracting a certain amount of attention. As the official film description explains: The film is set...
There can be a tendency sometimes to assume that historical programming is the sole domain of the BBC or Channel 4. If I Don't Come Home: Letters from D-Day, which aired on ITV earlier this month, rather...
On June 6th 1944 Jim Radford, aged just 15, was serving on the HM Rescue tug Empire Larch at Gold Beach tasked, amongst other things, with building the breakwater and later the mulberry harbour there. 70 years...
War and gaming are a not uncommon partnership. This is particularly true in the field of strategy games, where the last twenty years have seen the kind of historical gaming once confined to pen and paper (and...
A few years ago whilst recording a podcast on a certain aspect of London's railway history I found myself in conversation with author N Quentin Woolf about the impact the battle of the Somme had on those who...
It can be hard sometimes to grasp just how much of an impact the Blitz had on London alone. Between September 1940 and 21 May 1941 London was subjected to major raids over seventy times, and suffered countless...
At 5:15 on the 11th May 1812, Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister of Great Britain entered the House of Commons on his way to attend an inquiry into a set of Orders of Council he had issued. As Perceval walked...
On the 22nd of July 1976, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, archaeologist, died at the age of 85. He left behind an enormous legacy. In a career that spanned over sixty years, working in Britain, France and India, he had...
On Monday the 2nd January 1979, Eiichi Kono walked into the offices of Banks and Miles, one of London’s most renowned graphic design agencies. It was his first day at the firm as a typographer, and he was...
