I shall spare you. It’s quite safe. You’ve followed the story of life here at Snaptophobic Towers through the year. You don’t need to be reminded, and neither do I.

Instead, here’s a summary of my watching, listening and reading for 2025.

Watching

This one’s easy. I refer you, honourable reader, to last year’s post. It’s almost identical.

I have completed Star Trek: Deep Space 9. I haven’t quite made it through ST: Voyager. Next year, I hope to get started on the prequel series Enterprise. I did note that there have been various Star Trek series blossoming on subscription channels over the past couple of years. I really can’t be bothered by them, though they do appear well received.

I have added one or two YouTube channels to my watching habit, but nothing worth really mentioning.

Listening

I have been listening to a lot of podcasts this past year. I won’t add links, because I am being spectacularly lazy right now. Let’s just say history podcasts have been to the fore, and you can find them wherever you get your podcasts, as they say.

• Dan Snow’s History Hit
• The Ancients (also from History Hit)
• The British History Podcast
• The English Heritage Podcast

Reading

I have managed to read quite a bit this year. I wonder if you can spot a bit of a theme?

• Anatomy of a Campaign, the British fiasco in Norway, 1940 – John Kiszely
• Dünkirchen 1940, the German view of Dunkirk – Robert Kershaw
• Britain’s War, a New World 1942–1947 –- Daniel Todman (companion to Into Battle 1937–1941 by the same author)
• Britain At Bay: the epic story of the Second World War 1938–1941 – Alan Allport
• Browned Off and Bloody-minded, the British soldier goes to war 1939–1945 – Alan Allport

Alan Allport’s second book, Advance Britannia: How the Second World War Was Won, 1942–1945, has been published. I await the paperback edition. Todman and Allport have both written on the same subject now, and it is interesting to see how the two authors compare, with subtly different takes from the same source material.

In a vain attempt to break away from the clutches of Amazon, I now buy my physical reading material from an independent online reseller, in this case Wedale Books up on the Scottish Border. They are part of the Bookshop.org family, and by purchasing through them many local bookshops around the UK are supported.

Well, that’s rounded off a year I would really rather forget. See you in 2026!