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Fall/John Preston

This is the story of Robert Maxwell and what a life story it is. Born as Jan Ludvik Hoch in 1923 into an impoverished Czechoslovakian Jewish family who were largely exterminated in the Holocaust, he joined up with the British army liberating Europe, reinvented himself as Captain Robert Maxwell and [...]

December 19, 2024 // 0 Comments

The Reunion/Radio 4

The Reunion is back on Sunday mornings. Once presented by Sue McGregor – a superb broadcaster – it’s now in the hands of Kirsty Wark. The rationale is to look back at an event and invite some of the main actors in it to discuss and review it. Yesterday’s event was the [...]

August 19, 2024 // 0 Comments

Fascist lack of UK leadership

My late father was a keen observer of politics and life. Though I never knew him to read a newspaper he was always remarkably well informed. I had many interesting and informative conversations with him about growing up in Hackney in the 1930s. I asked him about the Fascist Marches. He replied that [...]

August 9, 2024 // 0 Comments

Berlin/PBS documentary

My TV channel of choice for evening viewing is PBS America for its outstanding documentaries. This was the second part of a documentary on Berlin the city. In World War Two the Red Army was the first to Berlin and subjected what citizens were left – mainly children and women – to [...]

June 4, 2024 // 0 Comments

The Reform Club

I have just returned from three days at the Reform Club. I have gone though various stages. My first was the decision to join made last year after a convivial lunch with a friend member. The accommodation is far cheaper than a West End hotel, the location in Pall Mall convenient and the Sir Charles [...]

January 18, 2024 // 0 Comments

Kennedy, Sinatra and the Mafia (Channel 4)

I’m not a great one for a Channel 4/5 conspiracy documentary which tends to be more speculation to grab the headlines but not bolstered by hard evidence. However this one made a plausible case. This was that Jack Kennedy befriended Frank Sinatra, who arranged glamorous Hollywood film stars for [...]

November 6, 2023 // 0 Comments

An expedition to two National Trust properties

Earlier this year the Boss and I joined the National Trust on a “family ticket”. For many years she had been a member of the organisation and occasional visitor to a variety of its properties. In my case, whilst I had been to a few of them over the past six decades, this was more by informal [...]

September 24, 2023 // 0 Comments

The State – and the state of the country

As life goes on I become more and more progressively unsurprised by anything that ever happens. Common sense, logic, just desserts and the unchanging fundamentals of human existence seem to have become old-fashioned, inappropriate and irrelevant. I was reminded of this week as I trawled through the [...]

August 19, 2023 // 0 Comments

Israel/Daniel Gordis

I have just finished Daniel Gordis’ concise but thorough history of Israel from the time of Zionist Theodore Herzl to the present day. It’s written from the Israeli point of view but aware of the country’s failings and sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. The journey from Herzl to [...]

March 19, 2023 // 0 Comments

Stonehouse

Whilst I enjoyed this three-part series broadcast over 3 nights on ITV, there are two problems with this genre. Firstly, they require not much writing creativity as you already have a story with characters and secondly, how can you differentiate between what is fact and what is faction? Apparently [...]

January 5, 2023 // 0 Comments

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