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Two for the price of one

Today the world mourns two of its unlikely icons – overnight the deaths were announced of Christine Keeler, the girl at the centre of the infamous 1960s British sex scandal known as the Profumo Affair, and the legendary French ‘bad boy’ pop idol Johnny Hallyday at the ages of 75 and 74 [...]

December 6, 2017 // 0 Comments

Where is it all going to end, and when?

Yesterday Prince Harry officially announced his engagement to Meghan Markle and apparently aired his tip for success when embarking upon a relationship, viz. spending time together at home first before venturing out on romantic dates, outings, trips to the theatre or ballet and even meals – see [...]

November 28, 2017 // 0 Comments

Some men achieve

Stuck miles away in the depths of the countryside staying with my aged father this weekend, for a good part of yesterday we sat in the drawing room reading the newspapers and, after those had been consumed, he then looked through a pair of old family photograph albums whilst I picked up a hardback [...]

November 25, 2017 // 0 Comments

Munich/Robert Harris

Munich by Robert Harris is one of those readable novels you can devour in one go. This perhaps surprising as we all know what happened in Munich in 1938. The main story is of  the collusion between Hugh Legat, an aspiring diplomat in the Foreign Office, and his friend at Oxford Paul von Hartmann, [...]

November 23, 2017 // 0 Comments

Two of a kind

Towards the end of last week, based solely upon its reviews in the Arts sections of the newspapers, I bought a copy of Walter Isaacson’s new book Leonardo Da Vinci – The Biography (525 pages not counting Cited Sources, Notes to Chapters, Illustration Credits, Index and About The Author, [...]

November 7, 2017 // 0 Comments

What we knew then and now

The biggest media story of the moment is that of the rise and fall of 65 year old movie mogul Harvey Weinstein – well, not so much about his rise to being one of the most powerful men in Hollywood for more than two decades, but his spectacular fall from grace over his predatory sexual behaviour. [...]

October 12, 2017 // 0 Comments

Coming to terms with it

Regular readers of the Rust will probably be of a vintage able to recall the Andy Capp cartoon strip drawn by Reg Smythe for the Daily Mirror newspaper. Capp was almost an early version of a British Homer Simpson, a working class Everyman from whose ‘ordinary’ interests in life – pubs, beer, [...]

September 14, 2017 // 0 Comments

Everything works fine until it doesn’t

One of the ironies of the age is that anyone of ‘a certain age’ (like me) can be found harping on about how things were in their youth – and how baffling or stupefying the modern world increasingly tends to be – and yet half the time we’re also part of it. On the Rust there’s always [...]

August 19, 2017 // 0 Comments

Watt is what it’s all about

With my son Barry staying with me at the moment recovering from his somewhat complicated broken wrist operation we are currently having what might be described as ‘quality time’ together at my gaff. This inevitably has two sides to it because I normally live on my own and he, only semi-house [...]

August 10, 2017 // 0 Comments

The effects of the First (or Great) World War

There is little doubt that the nation’s fascination with all matters relating to WW1 will continue for centuries. The reasons for this are bound up in such issues its status as a major milestone on human society’s perhaps inevitable route to potential self-annihilation; the fact that [...]

August 6, 2017 // 0 Comments

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