Adrian Smith

THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY BLOG: www: The Day Before Yesterday: Adrian Smith, modern historian – University of Southampton site (soton.ac.uk)

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According to the Met Office last month's mean temperature of 14.9 celsius makes it the hottest June since 1940.  A marked feature about weather patterns in the 1940s is the harshness of the winters across Europe, as the German Army found to its cost in Russia from late 1941.  For the British it's a postwar winter that is etched into the national psyche, with the ice and snow lasting well into the ostensible spring (with extensive flooding once the big melt began). Continue reading →

David Campbell Bannerman has been in the news a great deal recently as a cheer leader for Boris Johnson.  He is chair of the self-styled Conservative Democratic Organisation, a body loud in its criticism of Rishi Sunak's premiership and its insistence that Johnson is innocent of all findings of the Commons' Privileges Committee. Campbell Bannerman's chequered political career has been built around a deep loathing of Brussels and enthusiastic support for chancers like Farage and Johnson. Continue reading →

Mountbatten, Cold War and Empire, 1945-79 and the paperback edition of its prequel, Mountbatten Apprentice War Lord were both published at the tail end of last year.  There was so much that I couldn't include in the second volume, including the following: On the first weekend in June 1979 Earl Mountbatten of Burma had no idea his life would end with sudden and brutal ferocity only two months later. Continue reading →

Nothing now surprises me given the events of the past seven years, but as mind boggling as Coventry City's progress to the Championship play off final for promotion to the Premier League is surely the news that Qatar is giving serious thought to staging the 2025 Rugby League World Cup now that France have pulled out - that must be a strong contender for the most surreal story so far this year. Continue reading →

Last month the New Statesman published a special edition to mark the magazine's 110th anniversary.  It was a more modest affair than the centenary issue, to which I contributed as the author of The New Statesman, 1913-1932 Portrait of a Political Weekly (and good luck if you can find let alone afford a copy of that!). Continue reading →

The blog accompanying the research and writing of my life of aviation pioneer and industrialist Sir Richard Fairey ended with publication of the book five years ago.  As then I remain Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the University of Southampton.  So why resurrect the blog under a new name - shameless self-promotion?  Well yes, to a degree. Firstly, I'm acutely conscious of how difficult it is to get books reviewed. Continue reading →