Interwar period

Shots Fired: Marjorie Foster and Women at War

After winning the biggest shooting prize in the Empire, Marjorie Foster joined the new pantheon of women making sporting headlines. On the eve of the Second World War, she had a new target in her sights: the War Office.

The War Before the Waltz

Victor Silvester brought ballroom dancing to the masses and his enormous influence persists to this day in the TV show Strictly Come Dancing. Much less well known is his extraordinary career as a boy soldier in the Great War. Richard Hughes sets the record straight.   

Léon Blum’s Republic of Broken Dreams

French history since the revolution has been marked by promises of progress that end in bitter failure. The election of Léon Blum’s Popular Front in 1936 was one such example.

Walther Rathenau

As a minister in the German cabinets of 1921-2, writes David Felix, Rathenau faced formidable problems of post-war reconstruction.