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V2/Robert Harris

Popular historical fiction writer Robert Harris spent the lockdown researching this novel about the V2 rocket. There are two strands to the narrative. The novel begins with a V2 rocket hitting Warwick Court in London where Kay, a reconnaissance analyst for the RAF, is having an affaire with one of [...]

March 30, 2021 // 0 Comments

My Rembrandt

This is a Dutch documentary available on Amazon Prime which I watched last night. It’s about the ownership or acquisition of a Rembrandt. Rembrandt never went out of fashion unlike his peer Johannes Vermeer who had to wait 200 years for fame. Similarly Gustav Klimt and Sandro Botticelli would [...]

March 24, 2021 // 0 Comments

Defence is a no-win matter

Today is the anniversary of the imposition of the UK’s first lockdown – a milestone that I’m sure most of us will not be celebrating. During my overnight trawl of the newspaper websites I noticed a piece in The Independent detailing that apparently the nation’s total of 126,000 Covid-19 [...]

March 23, 2021 // 0 Comments

The human presumption

All species live life “in the moment” – in basic terms, each morning they awake, seek out food and sustenance, “do their thing” and eventually go back to sleep again, all against the background of what the specific conditions are on any given day. It is one of the crosses to bear of the [...]

February 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

Reflections upon an unwelcome milestone

Yesterday the UK had to come to terms with the sobering news that our total number of deaths so far due to the Covid-19 virus has just passed 100,000. From memory I can recall that one of our boffin masters – almost certainly either Professor Chris Witty (chief medical officer) or Sir Patrick [...]

January 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

The Infiltrators /Norman Ohler

I have always been interested in the degree of complicity of the German people – das Volk – in Nazism and its crimes and conversely the resistance domestically to the regime. This readable and well-researched account of two such resistants – Harro Schultze-Boysen and his wife [...]

January 19, 2021 // 0 Comments

Woke frustration

One aspect of contemporary arts which consistently irritates me is the random woke application. A good example of this was a programme I saw recently on Channel Four entitled The 100 Greatest Musicals. I enjoy such programmes for the clips from the musicals and input from film historians and [...]

January 12, 2021 // 0 Comments

Waiting for it

Not being someone who sets much store by celebrating birthdays or religious festivals, last night the supposed weirdness that many of my family and friends have commented upon at marking the commencement of the New Year under the constraints of a Tier 4 lockdown or worse would have passed me by but [...]

January 1, 2021 // 0 Comments

English’s again

Not only is English’s my restaurant of choice but those I invite there inevitably wish to return. An old uni friend and his son – my Godson – were my visitors to it yesterday. My friend sensibly followed the rules and we ate outside on the terrace on a table they had prepared under a [...]

December 23, 2020 // 0 Comments

A review of a book that took three years to read

Since the beginning of December – with some unexpected spare time on my hands – I have turned to a pastime that frankly I do far too little of … reading. Quite without justification because, of course, “if you want something done, give it to a busy person” – or, in this context perhaps, [...]

December 19, 2020 // 0 Comments

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