Touch of Harry refers to Shakespeare's Henry V on the night before the 1415 Battle of Agincourt, the disguised king walked amongst the soldier to enlist their trust.
This blog is about the History books that I have read and notes on new interesting facts that I have learned. This is not a book review.
Thursday, November 20, 2025
The Hopkins Touch byDavil L. Roll : Harry Hopkins and forging the alliance to defeat Hitler 2013, 409pg
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte Mc Conaghy 320 pg 2025
A literary novel of Australia , climate change and how people cope. 28/10/25
Widower Dominic Salt has lived off the coast of Antarctica on the remote island of Shearwater with his three children — Raff 18, Fen 17 daughter, and Orly 9 — for eight years, serving as caretaker for a small climate/wildlife research station and an old lighthouse. Shearwater also houses the U. N Global Seed Vault.
An injured woman named Rowan arrives, and is pulled out of the sea by Fen. In the 1800s, oilers slaughtered entire seal population and most of its penguins. An island between New Zealand and Antarctica. Climate fiction Fen choosing to stay alone in a boathouse as she doesn't get along with his father. Rowen becomes a mother figure to the children.
Rowen came to the island to look for Hank her ex husband, a botanist who was one of the researchers on the island. He had to decide on what species to save of 30 million, how to let biodiversity die in favor of what humans can eat. All of us humans, decided what to save, and that is ourselves.”
Rowan arrives on the island on a small boat that crashes on the rocks and she survives because Fen is there and saves her, this was the worst stormed they have endured since living on the island . They can't figure out why she came here. Dominic is the father of the family and considers that Rowan is a strong woman to have survived this wild ocean. He doesn't know why she came but doesn't trust her. She is cold and wounded they warm her up with their bodies heat under blankets, and the treat her wounds and stitch her up.
The book ends with the icebreaker coming to collect 8 people but Dominic and his 3 children are alive. They take lots of tools and equipment as well as the seeds that are in packets. Just before that island is completely flooded over.
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Macquarie Island research center. In 1997 was declared a world heritage site. It was established as a radio relay station in 1911. Located halfway between Australia and Antarctica. Between 1810 and 1919 seals and penguins were hunted to almost extinction. The boiling pots to get the oil lie rusting there.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Spitzbergen.(Norway and funded by its government. Started in Longyearbyen in 1984 in an abandoned coal mine, this is in permafrost and many gene banks deposit their seeds here. In 2025 there are 1,378,238 seed types saved of 6,521 species.
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Ataturk The Rebirth of a Nation by Patrick Kinross 1964 499p
Ataturk The Rebirth of a Nation by Patrick Kinross 1964 499p
- Born in 1881 in Salonika, the area called Rumeli under the Ottomans he was one of 5 children., This was a port with a cosmopolitan population , Turk, Greek, Slav , Vitch , Albanian, Moslems , Christians and Jews.. His mother was a Turkish Moslem, his father was blue eyed perhaps of Slav or Albanian origin and a clerk in the customs office. It is considered that part of his family came from Donmeh these had been Jews who followed the false messiah Shavatai Tsvi and converted to Islam and had remained a district community for years. .
- Initially his mother insisted he go to a Moslem Clerical School where they sat cross legged on the floor learning to write Arabic calligraphy on their knees. After a few days he got up and refused to sit on the floor. His father took him to a secular school. For High School he had seen the kids in Military Uniform and with the help of a neighbor a soldier wrote the entrance exam and got into the Military High School here he learned military matters , history , economics philosophy, French and he aspired in mathematics .where his teacher gave him the name Kamel ( perfection) This school was composed of all social classes and you could rise on merit alone. At the station a group of dervishes arrived singing and dancing in their robes , their spirit was affecting the people around them Kamel saw this a privative religious fanatics' and was ashamed of it.
- When he got to Constantinople to do officer training he saw the southern city Stambul was poor Moslems while the north was Pera with wealthy Christians and foreigners who had a hold on the Ottoman Empire and the Turks were no longer masters of their own affairs as the Ottomans were in deep debt from the time of the1854 Crimean War. With his friend Ali Fuad the worked on their French and studied the French literature that was banned in military cadets. Aged 23 in 1902 he graduated with the rank of Captain. Because the political views of Kemal and a group of friends they were arrested. After they were released they were sent to the peripheral Provinces.
- As a cavalry officer based in Damascus, they had to control the Druse who had been forced to pay taxes in return for not being conscripted to the army. Kemal discovered that on the pretext of gathering arrears in taxes the troops, looted these villages. When it came to dividing the spoils Kemal said " do you want to be a man of today or tomorrow" The pacification of the Druse must be sought by skill and diplomacy not by bribery. When he saw singing and dancing he discovered it was Italians working on the Hejaz railways. In Damascus he felt imprisoned but Beirut with foreigners there was night life. with the support of friends he formed the Fatherland Society with a branch in Jaffa. Later on this became known as the Young Turks. They wanted to depose the Sultan and liberal constitution and a Turkish nationalist state. 1908 Within 3 months of declaring a constitution Bulgaria declared independence. Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina and Crete joined Greece.
- The Committee found Kemal a nuisance and sent him off to Libya to investigate the situation there. On the way stopping in Sicily children mocked the fez and Kemal decided that he has to away with that. In visiting Bengasi he found that there was a power struggle by the Ottoman authority and a local chief. He arranged to lead the Ottoman troops there on an exercise and after drilling a while took them to surround the chief, who immediately capitulated and gave Kemal what was demanded.
- When Abdul Hamid introduced professional German soldiers to train the army Kemal as a patriot disliked this even though he appreciated their worth. He said that greatness is deciding what the country need and getting it and not pandering to an applause. He realized that Islam was against democracy.
- In Libya the Italians had invaded and held all the coastal towns Kemal was sent to see what could be done. He had to arrive secretly on a Russian ship and made his way inland to the Ottoman army in the desert from where he realized they were in an impossible position, could not be supplied, but at this stage he was needed for the Balkan wars. Where Macadonia and Rumelia had already fallen and his mother had already fled from Salonica.
- By the time of Ataturk's death Turkey had a new alphabet, new civil code, universal suffrage, a new state religion, and secularism to go along with Islam.
- The last political act he did was getting the French to succeed the Hatay region from French Syria to Turkey He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul aged 57. he died of cirrhosis of the liver. This was 15 years after he had declared the Turkish Republic in 1923 Oct 29th. He was succeeded by his long time PM İsmet İnönü.
- During WW2 Turkey remained neutral thus blocking Germanys access to the Arab oil world and Allied aid reaching the Soviet Union via the Bosporus
- The Turks were the only one of the Central Powers able to overturn immediately the vindictive settlements imposed by the Allies following World War I. Because Turkish resistance ultimately was led to success by Mustafa Kemal, it long has been assumed that he created it as well. He did, indeed, do more than anyone else to create the Turkish Republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, but he accomplished this by bringing together elements of resistance that had already emerged. He coordinated their efforts, expressed their goals, personified their ambitions, and led them to victory.
Turkish war of Independance .The National Resistance Forces
Resistance appeared from the first days of the occupation while Mustafa Kemal still was in Cilicia. It came initially from within the Istanbul government itself, where many of the officials organized the secret Outpost Society (Karakol Cemiyeti) shortly after the armistice and used their positions to thwart the Allied demands as well as to send arms and ammunition to Anatolia. Small boats were loaded in the capital in the cover of darkness and sent out into the Aegean and the Black Sea to deliver their valuable cargoes. There is considerable evidence that Talat Paşa himself stimulated the first resistance movements in Thrace before fleeing the country and that resistance in Istanbul was organized within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When Mustafa Kemal, Kâzim Karabekir, and other leading officers returned to Istanbul to protest the demobilization orders, they were warmly received by the sultan and others and appointed to important positions in the areas remaining under direct Ottoman authority, where they could lead opposition almost under the noses of the Allies.
- Comparing Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Lee Kuan Yew of Singepore — two of the most transformative leaders of the 20th century — reveals striking parallels and fundamental differences. Both were nation-builders who shaped their countries through strong leadership, visionary reforms, and a focus on modernization, but they did so in very different historical, cultural, and geopolitical contexts.
Tuesday, October 14, 2025
With the Zionists in Gallipoli: 1916 by J H Patterson 162pg
A Zionist Volunteer's Tale of Valor and Sacrifice 14/10/25
Given the high degree of anti-Semitism then prevalent in Britain's officer class - highly critical of his fellow officers for discriminating against the Judeans, and other Jewish settlers in Palestine. This book is a rare insight into a remarkable episode in Anglo-Jewish history. Patterson had traipsed over many battlefields in Europe also Asia. In Spain he felt that the army had a manana attitude, he was not surprised that they crumbled before the Americans in Cuba. Patterson had, had military experience in the UK , India and the Boer War, Kings African Rifles in Kenya , Uganda. He had toured the States and found Virginia interesting as the great battles of the Civil War had been fought there. Here he was given this position to be a "mere muleteer," even though he knew little about mules. Set against the background of the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which pledged British support for establishing a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, He wrote this book in the interest of the Hebrew Nation and what they were capable of under the command of an alien in race and religion. The sons of Israel in the days of the Maccabees had for a time successfully fought for Jerusalem from the grasp of the Seleucid king Antiochus, Greek culture.
Some have the opinion that the expedition to the Dardanelles was in itself unsound and should never been undertaken. Britain had declared war on Turkey and Turkey had allowed the German ships Goeben and Breslau the freedom of her waters. *Had this campaign been successful it would have opened immense possibilities. Weapons would have streamed into Russia and wheat brought out for allies. A strong British hand in the Near East would have resulted in Balkan states not to link their fortune to the enemy. Bulgaria would have remained neutral and Greece and Romania would have fought for the Allies ?*
Saturday, September 27, 2025
Ataturk War, Either Independence of Death by Muge Sozen 2025 200pg
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Time Line
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- Italo Turkish War.1911-1912
- Italy obtained unity in 1871 and by 1811 wanted to reconstitute the Roman Empire. France had taken Morocco Algeria and Tunisia while the British were in Egypt. Italy was worried she would lose her opportunity. First Italian merchant and settlers were encouraged to move to Tunisia and trade, to avoid conflict the Ottomans gave them permission to do this. In 1911 the Italian PM sent 25,000 troops to invade and the quickly took over the coastal towns. The Ottoman and tribal Arabs joined forces against the Italians.
- This was the first time aircraft was used in both recognizance and bombing. The Turks were split between those who supported the Sultan and the Revolutionary Committee of Progress. This was when the Italians took the Dodecanese Islands and Rhodes and 13 islands in the Aegean to stop Ottoman ship helping Libya and attacked the Ottoman fleet in the Dardanelles.
- Mustafa Kemal arrived there on a Russian ship as a tourist and fought in the battles of Derma and Tobruk. His masterful leadership and organization earned him the respect of his comrades and cemented his reputation as a capable officer ready for WW1 ceded its North African territories of Tripoli and Cyrenaica to Italy in The Treaty of Lausanne 1912 Libya was declared Independent by the Ottomans. Then Italy could declare it a colony. More Italian soldiers died of dysentery than battle. This was one of the many sparks causing WW1 later.
- The Ottomans had to take their officers to deal with the Balkan wars and Mustafa Kemal was needed there. This was the end of the Ottomans in North Africa
The Hopkins Touch byDavil L. Roll : Harry Hopkins and forging the alliance to defeat Hitler 2013, 409pg
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