A S H Smyth › Islamic cities

Skip to content

Tag Archives: history

Islamic cities

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Review of Justin Marozzi’s Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities that Define a Civilization. – For Geographical

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Allen Lane, Arabs, architecture, Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Constantinople, Cordoba, Damascus, death, Doha, Dubai, Geographical, Isfahan, Islam, Jerusalsm, Justin Marozzi, Kabul, Mecca, money, non-fiction, religion, Royal Geographical Society, Samarkand, travel, Tripoli, war | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 7, 2019

. The Paris Louvre is in future to be guarded by watch-dogs. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Monday, July 13 1908 . The human population has almost doubled since we landed on the Moon. Genital preferences are transphobic. The third umpire will have the final say on the snatch. It is against the rules to take a [...]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, anatomy, Argentina, babies, Bertha, business, cell-phones, chewing gum, coconuts, cricket, death, dogs, drink, education, Florence, German, girls, Greeks, humans, lambs, law, Nelson Evening Mail, newspapers, Paris, philosophy, satire, singing, Stalin, the Louvre, the moon, West Sussex, wisdom, writing | Comments (0)

Hit and miss

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943 By Max Hastings William Collins £25 . By 1943, after nearly four years of war ‘ameliorated [only] by a thin gruel of successes,’ Britain and her western allies had little to boast in terms of their offensive victories; the lion’s share of the burden was very clearly being shouldered by [...]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Bomber Command, Dambusters, death, engineering, film, Germany, Guy Gibson, Max Hastings, non-fiction, RAF, Sir Arthur Harris, Sir Charles Portal, the Commonwealth, The Oldie, war, William Collins, WW2 | Comments (0)

Great Man history

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

On Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking with Destiny. – For The Oldie

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Andrew Roberts, biography, Churchill, The Oldie, war | Comments (0)

Intelligence review

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

‘For centuries before the Second World War, educated British people knew far more about intelligence operations recorded in the Bible than they did about the role of intelligence at any moment in their own history.’ Nowadays, one might think, few would even know that. But that’s where Christopher Andrew – Emeritus Professor of Modern and [...]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Afghanistan, Allen Lane, America, Ancient Egypt, army, Bletchley Park, Cardinal Richelieu, China, Christianity, Christopher Andrew, Christopher Marlowe, CIA, Clausewitz, Elizabeth I, Francis Walsingham, Holland, India, Islam, Israel, Ivan the Terrible, Julius Caesar, MI5, MI6, Napoleon, non-fiction, Pearl Harbour, Russia, spies, Stalin, Sun Tzu, the Bible, the Cold War, the KGB, the Medway, The Oldie, the Spanish Armada, University of Cambridge, Vasili Mitrokhin, Venice, war, Waterloo, WWII, Xenophon | Comments (0)

Monty’s trouble

Monday, May 28, 2018

A footsoldier’s review of Antony Beevor’s Arnhem: the Battle for the Bridges, 1944. – For The Oldie

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged 1st Airborne Division, Allied Expeditionary Force, Antony Beevor, army, Arnhem, books, Britishness, engineering, Field Marshal Montgomery, Flanders, General Bradley, General Eisenhower, General Patton, Germans, Holland, Nijmegen, non-fiction, Operation Market Garden, paratroopers, Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, the Dutch, The Oldie, the Schutzstaffel, the Wehrmacht, WW2 | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 30, 2018

. Norway has five leper hospitals, with about 600 patients. — The Nelson Evening Mail, January 24 1907 . There is an injury called ’tennis elbow of the heel’. The rocks in the Sultanate of Oman are special. Hitler only started all the Nazi bollocks because he was such a godawful painter. There is no necessary connection between [...]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, America, birds, boxing, codicology, crime, death, dogs, Edwin RIst, finance, Francis Urquhart, geology, health, leprosy, London International Palaeography Summer School, manuscripts, mountaineering, Natural History Museum, Nazism, Nelson Evening Mail, Norway, Oman, painting, palaeography, phones, Poetry, poets, policing, pudding, Samaritans, Stephen Merchant, tennis, the Bible, the Scots Guards, Tibetan, Tring | Comments (0)

Cannon law

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Review of Kim A Wagner’s The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857. – For The Spectator

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Alum Bheg, army, Bengal Native Infantry, Brigadier-General John Nicholson, British Empire, colonialism, death, geography, India, Indian Mutiny, Kim A Wagner, non-fiction, Pakistan, Queen Mary University of London, religion, sepoys, Sialkot, the East India Company, The Spectator | Comments (0)

Summoning Pearl Harbor

Thursday, December 7, 2017

A commemoration of Pearl Harbor, through Alexander Nemerov’s ekphrastic explorations. – For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged air travel, Aleutian Islands, Alexander Nemerov, America, art, Congress, David Zwirner Books, ekphrasis, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Hawaii, Japan, Jimmy Roosevelt, navy, Stanford, The Oldie, USMC, war | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 2, 2017

. Few of those who know and admire the camellia, that waxlike and pure flower, are aware that the parent plant, the origin of the million plants scattered throughout Europe, is still alive and is in Italy. — The Nelson Evening Mail, January 22 1907 . The Taliban now control more territory in Afghanistan than they did [...]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Afghanistan, Alex Haley, Americans, castanets, D-Day, dancing, death, fishing, flora, France, genealogy, hats, Icelandic, Ireland, Italy, Khmer, Lakshman Joseph de Saram, linguistics, Miles Davis, musicians, Nelson Evening Mail, ostriches, phones, Playboy, politics, race, religion, royalty, shit, Sri Lanka, the Taliban, Theresa May, Vikings, violin, vomit, war, woodpeckers | Comments (3)