Y1806 A sweeping historical re-examination of some of Europe’s most powerful royal women is challenging centuries of myth, propaganda, and outright slander, arguing that figures long dismissed as poisoners, she-wolves, and scheming mother-in-laws were in fact shrewd political operators navigating a brutal patriarchal world. The debate centers on four formidable queens whose names still provoke controversy: … Read more
LONDON — The bomb that tore apart a 29-foot fishing boat off the coast of County Sligo on August 27, 1979, killed Lord Louis Mountbatten, two teenage boys, and an 83-year-old baroness in a single blast heard across the bay. But the explosion did not merely end four lives. It shattered a sixty-year system of … Read more
LONDON — In the cramped, smoke-filled war rooms beneath Whitehall, where Winston Churchill had spent six years willing the Allied armies toward Berlin, a single telegram shattered the reputation of Britain’s most celebrated battlefield commander in the space of a heartbeat. The message arrived on the evening of March 23, 1945, and it came not … Read more
Il momento in cui varcai la porta di casa di mio figlio, sentii che qualcosa non andava. Non il tipo di sbagliato che puoi indicare con il dito. Quello che ti si deposita nel petto prima che la mente riesca a raggiungerlo. Mi chiamo Naen Smith. E ho cresciuto un ragazzo che mi raccontava tutto. … Read more
FRONT LINES, EUROPEAN THEATER — A captured German general’s demand for a private room and fine wine ended in a freezing mud ditch late Saturday after Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. personally ordered the aristocratic officer thrown into a flooded drainage trench alongside a muddy supply road. The confrontation, which unfolded at approximately 1400 … Read more
Thirty-two American soldiers died on a road in southern Germany on March 27, 1945, and for 36 years the United States Army buried the reason why. They died because a four-star general sent 314 men 60 miles behind enemy lines on a mission that every officer in the room told him would fail, and because … Read more
WASHINGTON — The American general who commanded the largest U. S. field army in Europe during World War II, led his troops across the Rhine at Remagen, closed the Ruhr Pocket and met the Red Army on the Elbe River, remains almost entirely unknown to the public he served — and historians say the silence … Read more
ARLON, Belgium — A frozen road outside this southern Belgian town became the site of an unrecorded turning point in the Battle of the Bulge on the afternoon of Dec. 22, 1944, when Gen. George S. Patton Jr. discovered that soldiers of his Third Army had gone three days without a hot meal. The encounter, … Read more
Stai per sposare un idraulico. Che imbarazzo! I miei genitori sogghignarono. Mia sorella rise chiedendo chi si sarebbe mai presentato a un matrimonio del genere. Mi voltarono le spalle e io percorsi la navata da sola, ma non avevano idea che l’uomo che deridevano come un nessuno stava per diventare la persona più importante della … Read more
Era la notte del Ringraziamento e la villa brillava come un albergo di lusso. Risate e tintinnio di calici salivano come una sinfonia dorata, ma io, una vecchia madre, me ne stavo in silenzio all’angolo del tavolo, cercando di non disturbare nessuno. Bastò un secondo, un solo secondo di tremore senile e di smarrimento, e … Read more