I was brought up with a whole bunch of cousins in the Wye Valley during the hippy days of the 1970s.
Winter horseshoes are equipped with little spikes that give a horse traction on snow and ice and prevent it from slipping.
Ever since World War I, superior force is no longer measured in terms of men or horses, but in the means to wreak destruction.
History tells us that a general can move and feed an army as efficiently as he likes, but the real litmus test is the battlefield.
Henry Kissinger is perhaps the best-known American statesman of the 20th century.
Even a moderniser like Alexander II - who emancipated the serfs in 1861 - had no intention of devolving real power.
No campaign of the First World War better justifies the poets' view of the conflict as futile and pitiless than Gallipoli.
If I'm at a book signing, and someone decides to take me to task, it can make for quite a sticky moment.
Those who read the fiction assume that, because I'm also a historian, I know what I'm talking about.
The people who read the history books tend to have a natural zeal and are alarmingly well-read.
