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Modern life (viewed from the sidelines)

My offering today is relatively simple and straightforward. It concerns what I believe to be two of the many conundra of 21st Century modern living, despite the ever-more amazing scientific and technological developments that the human race continually invents and takes advantage of. I refer, [...]

March 4, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Duke (2020)

The Duke is a quintessentially English movie with its roots in the Ealing comedies of the 50s and the northern grit films of the early 60s. Ealing Comedies like The Lavender Hill Mob and League of Gentlemen were caper movies pricking the pomposity of the Establishment. The Duke was slightly [...]

March 4, 2022 // 0 Comments

American and British art of the twentieth century

In our art course these past few weeks we have been considering American and British art of the twentieth century. American art before the twentieth century was colonial art depicting the West. America’s emergence artistically in the first half of the twentieth century owed much to the camera. [...]

March 3, 2022 // 0 Comments

Coverage of war over the years

I used to enjoy discussing with my late father how World War Two was covered. His father would go to the cinema twice weekly for Pathe News so the newsreel and the commentary of Bob Danvers Walker were vital. Winston Churchill would deliver his radio message in that re-assuring resonant voice [...]

March 3, 2022 // 0 Comments

Headline/Daily Star

Every so often a tabloid headline is right “on the money”. I recall Gotcha during the Falkland War and Up Yours Delors.    In the Daily Star this headline appeared. It made me laugh out loud. Of course the brothers Klitschko could not withstand a Russian tank, but reducing the conflict [...]

March 2, 2022 // 0 Comments

Rise of the Nazis/BBC 4

Last night I watched the third and final part of the series Rise of the Nazis.    I was unimpressed. I watched years ago – and still have the box set – of The World at War and this programme falls way short of that. That series, narrated by Lawrence Olivier, called upon living [...]

March 1, 2022 // 0 Comments

Ukraine war: a heavyweight Brit broadcaster weighs in

Since the rogue President Putin ordered his armed forces to invade the Ukraine last week our television screens, radio airwaves, newspaper websites and social media outlets have been filled with wall-to-wall coverage of its progress and the reactions of governments and peoples around the world. [...]

February 27, 2022 // 0 Comments

The invasion of Ukraine – the chess angle

Yesterday was spent in front of the television watching events in Ukraine unfurl. I opted for Sky News. The adverts were irritating – and the photo footage repeated – but they pulled in the important personalities, starting with Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, and were across the big [...]

February 26, 2022 // 0 Comments

Defence: what’s it really for, exactly?

It seems to me that more than anything – never mind the current Russian invasion of the Ukraine, let’s go back and reference its seizing of the Crimean Peninsular in 2014 in furtherance of President Putin’s loony attitude to Euro-Russian geo-politics and power-balancing – the vexing subject [...]

February 26, 2022 // 0 Comments

Prague Fatale (Philip Kerr) and Berlin Nightfall (Jack Grimwood)

It is the best testimony to the writing of Philip Kerr that after reading a few chapters of Prague Fatale I realised I have already read it. I was sufficiently engaged and engrossed to continue to its end. It’s set in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia when Reinhard Heydrich, the ruthless [...]

February 23, 2022 // 0 Comments

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