Front line of history

Lee Miller threw herself into life, dancing at Surrealist balls, taking fashion to Blitz-torn streets and dreaming up blue-spaghetti recipes, all the time intoxicating men and fighting inner demons, as Mary Miers reveals

This year marks 80 years since the end of the Second World War. The conflict is rapidly fading from living memory as the last survivors die, and 2025 has seen the final surviving Battle of Britain pil

On a frosty New Year’s Day in 1944, a young soldier from Newcastle married the love of his life with barely four hours to spare. My father, Corporal George Bell, a conscript with the Royal Electrical

Even the most successful and affluent individuals are not immune to the effects of shell shock, a powerful reminder that, beneath status and achievement, we are all fundamentally human. As I sift thro

I’M up at my mum’s old house, going through a trunk full of photographs. There is a biscuit tin of medals here, awarded to my grandfathers after World War I. I pull one of them out and realise it was

This portrait (the larger image) has been copied on Ancestry trees by many people. It purports to be my 2x great-grandfather, Cain Mayer (1841–1881) who was killed in a mining explosion at Chatterley