Thucydides set the 'gold standard' for a strategic analysis of war with his history of the Peloponnesian War: Dr Roel Konijnendijk explains how.

Thucydides, who lived almost two-and-a-half millennia ago, revolutionised strategic analysis by asserting the place of human agency rather than attributing events as being shaped by Gods or fate. This is something that Machiavelli repeats centuries later in The Prince. Thucydides claimed to have identified patterns of strategic behaviour that he thought would be enacted 'as long as human nature is the same'. A fascinating question, however, is whether strategists have behaved according to these patterns because they have been inspired to do so by reading Thucydides, or did he truly discover patterns of behaviour that endure throughout time and space? Are modern scholars projecting their own strategic world views into Ancient Greece or has our Ancient Greek heritage determined how we see the world? Finally, did Thucydides think that a world in which 'the strong do what they will and the weak have to put up with it' is the only possible one?

Dr Roel Konijnendijk is the Derby Fellow of Ancient History at Lincoln College, Oxford. After his PhD from University College London, he held several prestigious research fellowships and taught ancient history at UCL, Birkbeck, Warwick, Oxford, and Edinburgh. He is the author of Classical Greek Tactics: A Cultural History (2018) and Between Miltiades and Moltke: Early German Studies in Greek Military History (2022) as well as co-editor of Brill's Companion to Greek Land Warfare Beyond the Phalanx (2021).

General Marshall planned brilliantly for the US Army’s rapid wartime growth and a 'Just Peace' for post-war Europe. Professor Bill Johnsen explains how.

General George C Marshall's (1880-1959) career as a strategist and strategic leader was impressive. As the Chief of Staff for the US Army, he oversaw a forty-fold increase in the size of the Army. Quick to spot talent and advance it out of turn, his appointments included Generals Omar Bradley, Lesley J McNair, George S Patton, and perhaps most crucially, Dwight D Eisenhower. Winston Churchill described Marshall as 'the organiser of victory'

After the War, he was appointed as Secretary of State, where he lobbied for the reconstruction of Europe that would build the capacity of nations exhausted by the War, and act as a bulwark against Soviet expansion. The European Reconstruction Plan, which would eventually become simply the 'Marshall Plan', earned him the unique distinction of being the only Army General to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Professor William (Bill) Johnsen is the former Director of Academics at the US Army War College, and a former Infantry Officer. He served in NATO working on the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty and the 1991 NATO Strategy. He is the author of numerous works, including Origins of the Grand Alliance: Anglo-American Military Collaboration from the Panay Incident to Pearl Harbor (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), and his latest manuscript, tentatively entitled War Councilors: The Combined Chiefs of Staff and the Winning of World War II, is under publication review.

Professor Lucy Riall explains Garibaldi's mastery of revolutionary war by harnessing military, political and populist levers of power to become a father of modern Italy.

Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) was one of the world's greatest revolutionaries, leading resistance movements with irregular armies such as the Ragamuffins and the Red Shirts in Latin America and Europe. A crucial figure of 19th century liberalism and nationalism, he inspired millions. Che Guevara claimed that he was the only hero the world needs.

As one of the fathers of modern Italy, Garibaldi was the Risorgimento's Sword, to Count Cavour's Brain and Giuseppe Mazzini's Soul. Untrained as a soldier and often over-matched by his opponents, he nevertheless achieved victories against the French and Austrian Armies, the Papal States and in Sicily. Perhaps as impressively, he maintained the effectiveness of irregular forces in numerous retreats that might, under a lesser commander, have lost the morale of his citizen fighters against professional armies. Historian AJP Taylor described Garibaldi thus: 'He evoked from the people, and even from the politicians, a personal devotion almost without parallel in modern history; . . . and he showed himself the greatest general that Italy has ever produced.'

Professor Lucy Riall is a leading expert on modern Italy. She has written extensively on Italy's formation, as well as on Giuseppe Garibaldi. She is currently at the European University institute in Florence and a Visiting Professor at the National Museum of Ethnology in Japan.