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By 1915, the Allies were struggling to break through Germany’s Western Front, and so began looking for another line of attack.
In the Great War of 1914-1918, the German Empire’s bid for European domination was backed by the Ottoman Empire, now controlled by the infamous Ismail Enver and his ‘Young Turks’. The Allies desperately wanted to take the Turks out of the war, and open up a third front to release pressure on France and the Russian Empire.
Posted November 26 2019
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George served in the Roman army and lies buried in Israel, yet he makes an ideal patron for England.
It is sometimes said that England’s patron saint, St George, is not very English. Yet Britain in his day was part of the Roman Empire, and George refused to help the Roman Emperor send troops against his own people, meddle with the Church or impose cruel and arbitrary punishments — all key provisions of The Great Charter of 1215. You can’t get more English than that.
Posted November 22 2019
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Maximian and his friends refused to take part in a multi-faith day of prayer for unity.
In the days of the Roman Emperor Theodosius (r. 402-450) doubts were again being raised about the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of bodies. Just at that moment, a letter came to the Imperial court in Constantinople from nearby Ephesus, where the Bishop had seen with his own eyes a quite extraordinary tale of life after death.
Posted October 28 2019
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The Israelites turn to Deborah for help after twenty years under the harsh rule of King Jabin and his stern general Sisera.
Deborah was the fourth of the Judges, a series of prophets who ruled Israel when they first entered Canaan, their Promised Land. The message of their stories was that if Israel turned from God to worship the gods of the nations, then God would let the kings of the nations have their way until Israel repented.
Posted October 15 2019
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In 655, the future of England as a Christian nation hung by the slenderest of threads.
Following the conversion of Ethelbert, King of Kent, in 597, one after another the Kings of England’s kingdoms were baptised; Sigeberht of the East Angles even resigned his crown to his brother Anna, in order to become a monk. But Cenwalh of Wessex remained unmoved, as did his brother-in-law Penda, mighty lord of Mercia.
Posted October 13 2019
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Sir Charles Lucas looked back at the role of the Government, the military and private enterprise during three centuries of British adventure overseas.
To end the six-volume ‘Oxford Survey of the British Empire’, Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas looked back over the history of England’s overseas adventures from time of Queen Elizabeth I to the end of the Victorian Age. He concluded that there had been three quite distinct eras, and began by looking at the character of our enterprise during the upheavals of the seventeenth century.
Posted October 8 2019