The death of Sam Neill at the age of 78, even more poignant after only a short time after overcoming cancer, marks the passing of one of the finest actors of his generation, whose quiet humanity, intelligence and seemingly effortless screen presence marked him out as a unique presence in cinema 1/44

Either way, the artillerymen are still most likely intended as Royal Irish Artillery, and the discrepancy is probably down to the limitations of the artwork, colour variation, or fading over time rather than the uniform itself.

My suspicion is that this has more to do with the tiny scale of the figures and the hand coloured nature of the print than any actual change in uniform. As a long shot (forgive the pun), perhaps Carey’s original sketch depicted men in campaign dress rather than full regulation appearance.

The large bicorn had returned by then, without lace for the RIA by 1798, and Thompson’s reconstruction shows it with a substantial white plume. What’s interesting is that our favourite Carey and Brocas print seems to show the howitzer crew with much paler facings.

Finally, though Swit was of fellow European Polish descent, her character’s name Houlihan is an Irish surname and she certainly represented some of that fire for me. Thank you, Loretta, Godspeed… 27/27

#LorettaSwit said of M*A*S*H: “I decided to try to play [Houlihan] as a real person, in an intelligent fashion, even if it meant hurting the jokes.” Thanks to her, Houlihan evolved from Altman's sexual objectification and cipher to her male leads into a mature female characterisation. 7/27

Her contribution helped transform Margaret Houlihan from a supporting foil into one of the most memorable and nuanced characters in television history. She passed to the great stage in the sky on the 30th May last year. 6/27

The result greatly enriched the show, for which we owe her a considerable debt of gratitude, particularly at a time when complex female characters remained comparatively rare on television. 5/27

Swit worked closely with the writers in developing the character and, as Alan Alda's creative influence grew, found an important ally in shaping many of her later story lines. 4/27

All this while constantly butting heads with her lothario and anarchic nemesis, Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce. As dramatists from Aristotle onwards have understood, drama thrives on conflict. 3/27

personally difficult dialectic between the responsibilities of command, her own ideals of military service, and empathy for the nurses in her care and the physical and mental wellbeing of wounded soldiers. 2/27

Loretta Swit transformed her iconic character of Major "Hot Lips" Houlihan in the long running comedy set in a mobile medical unit during the Korean War, M*A*S*H, from an object of comedic derision and sexual objectification into an empowered and complex woman, always at the heart of an often 1/27

It was the greatest conflagration of the Cousin’s War, with a conservative and reasoned estimate of the dead to be in the realm of 20,000, the largest one-day death-toll of any battle on British soil. Its outcome resulted in regime change and one royal dynasty toppling another. 2/6

To commemorate this pivotal English medieval battle, an old essay of mine. The Battle of Towton was fought near the the Yorkshire village of Towton on Palm Sunday 1461 in a driving storm of sleet and snow. 1/6

Opening sequence, SS-GB (BBC, 2017). 5-part T.V. adaptation of SS-GB, directed by Philipp Kadelbach and produced by Sid Gentle Films for BBC One. Developed for television by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the series stars Sam Riley as Douglas Archer and Lars Eidinger as Standartenführer Oskar Huth.

The human cost is not dramatised so much as revealed, almost incidentally, in fragments of ordinary lives caught within that machinery. 18/24

the men required to act under fatigue and consequence, he resisted easy narratives of heroism. 16/24

From Bomber, with its unflinching, almost documentary rendering of a single RAF raid in real time, moving between aircrew, German civilians, and night fighters, through Blitzkrieg, with its reconstruction of the 1940 campaign as a sequence of operational decisions, movements, and contingencies 13/24

His early training in illustration and technical drawing informed a more schematic, systems based view of war, attentive to process, coordination, and the interaction of men and machines, with human beings understood as elements working within those systems. 11/24

Eidinger, for his part, shapes his performance with remarkable control, never reducing Huth to caricature but presenting a mind at work within ideology, curious, exacting, and at times unsettlingly humane. A performance of real merit, resisting easy expectation. 8/24

Riley brought to the role an austerity that audiences had earlier seen in Control, where he portrayed singer Ian Curtis, an economy of gesture and inward restraint that carries into Archer. 7/24

Their interplay is neither simple opposition nor alliance, but something more uneasy: a negotiation conducted in glances, inference, and withheld knowledge, where each recognises in the other both utility and threat. 6/24

Set beside perhaps a counterpiece, Fatherland, Deighton’s work is less overtly dramatic, but in many ways more insidious. Where Robert Harris builds a gripping political thriller, Deighton shows how such a world might actually function day to day, and how easily it might be endured. 3/24

Marking the passing of Len Deighton (1929–2026) last week, whose 1978 novel SS-GB remains, for me, his most quietly unsettling achievement. #lendeighton 1/24

Some photos have an author and a description which can be used to tell when and by whom they were taken, while others can only be guessed. But this huge amount of documentary evidence gives the 4/5

sides of the front by professional and amateur photographers, military and civilian. This site brings together photographs taken on different sides of the front by professional and amateur photographers, military and civilian. 3/5

Arthur Bondar private collection of unknown WWII photographs. The archive is a collection of previously unknown visual materials from World War II found around the world. This site brings together photographs taken on different 2/5

Hurt's backbreaking shooting schedule of 19hrs days inclusive of 6 hours make-up & prosthetics under the supervision of renowned Christopher Tucker (1941-2022) (a 22 piece creation which actor and make-up artist collaborated to design in another super human effort to make the filming deadline) 3/6