Work
'Spartan Supremacy: A "Possession for Ever"? Early fourth-century expectations of enduring ascendancy'in Hindsight in Greek and Roman History, ed. Anton Powell, Swansea (Classical Press of Wales) 2013, pp. 91-112.
This article explores and analyses the ways in which historians, both modern and ancient, have applied hindsight to the Spartan empire of 404-371 B.C., and to its downfall. Many modern treatments of the period are even labelled as studies in Spartan failure, and thus betray a tendency to over-emphasise error and lack of foresight on the part of Sparta.Read more...
'"Spartanische Pimpfe": The Importance of Sparta in the Ideology of the Adolf Hitler Schools'in Sparta in Modern Thought. Politics, History and Culture, ed. Stephen Hodkinson, Ian Macgregor Morris, Swansea (Classical Press of Wales) 2012, pp. 315-42.
This article explores the ways in which an ancient history textbook by the well-known archaeologist and educator Otto-Wilhelm von Vacano, entitled 'Sparta: The Life-Struggle of an Aryan Master Race', was used to encourage pupils at the Adolf Hitler Schools to identify with young Spartans, and to see Spartan history in proto-National Socialist terms.Read more...
Critique of the portrayal of the Prussian Cadet Corps in Jörg Muth's 'Command Culture' (2011)An informal blog review considering the flaws in Jörg Muth's portrayal of the Prussian Cadet Corps in chapter 3 of his monograph Command Culture: Officer Education in the U.S. Army and the German Armed Forces, 1901-1940, and the Consequences for World War II (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2011).Read more...
Presented at the 81st Anglo-American Conference of Historians, Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 6 July 2012.Read more...
Presented at the Modern German History Graduate Seminar, University of Cambridge, 28 May 2012.Read more...
Presented at the Classical Association Annual Conference 2012, University of Exeter, 12 April 2012.Read more...
Presented at the Association for German Studies Annual Conference 2012, University of Edinburgh, 2 April 2012.Read more...
Presented at the German Historical Institute London Postgraduate Conference 2012, German Historical Institute London, 12 January 2012.Read more...
N.B. For a list of talks given before December 2011, please click here.Read more...
'"Go, tell the Prussians…": The Spartan paradigm in Prussian military thought during the long nineteenth century'in New Voices in Classical Reception Studies ejournal, Issue 7 (2012), pp. 25-39.
This article examines the ways in which Ancient Spartan history and mores, and in particular the Spartan art of war, were often portrayed as providing useful precedents for the Prussian military. Commentators frequently saw the Officer-Corps as embodying a type of ‘new Sparta’ in Prussia, recreating a similarly militaristic and socially exclusive society in contemporary terms.Read more...