Tag Archives: The Times

They have wonderful editors

Hilary Mantel is an excellent writer. But when it was announced in January 2013 that Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies were going to be adapted for the RSC and a media maelstrom broke out, I felt uneasy. It wasn’t as though Thomas … Continue reading

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The thickness of events…

When writing a biography, you can go for months in its subject’s life without hearing a word from them, as it were: no letters from them to anyone have survived, they are not recorded as having said anything to anyone … Continue reading

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A correction?

It was perhaps a bit glib to say in the blog for 30 August that the B.E.F. ‘simply had to regroup’ etc.  However, Arthur Moore in The Times was certainly wrong to describe the B.E.F. as a ‘broken army’, and Sir John … Continue reading

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30 August 1914

On this day Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the B.E.F., telegraphed Joffre, his French counterpart, that he could not contemplate putting the B.E.F. back in the front line ‘for at least ten days’ and was intending to withdraw beyond the … Continue reading

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25 August 1914

On this day the first accounts of the Battle of Mons started appearing in British newspapers.  The Times headed its main report ‘Namur Lost, German Success in Belgium’ and led off: ‘The battle is joined and has so far gone … Continue reading

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