A S H Smyth › Hat trick ball

Skip to content

Tag Archives: history

Hat trick ball

Thursday, July 16, 2020

My mate Howard has found a cricket ball in his aunt’s attic… – For The Critic

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged beer, Bolton, British Army, courts martial, cricket, drink, Gibraltar, Gunner magazine, hats, James Costello, Lancashire, pubs, Royal Engineers, Royal Garrison Artillery, statistics, The Critic, Town Malling Cricket Club, Wisden, WWI | Comments (0)

Strength and honour

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

A love letter to 20 years of watching Gladiator. – For The Critic

Filed in column, Journalism | Also tagged Academy Awards, Alain de Botton, army, Classics, Cleopatra, Commodus, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, drink, Edward Gibbon, Facebook, film, Germans, Hans Zimmer, Harry Sidebottom, Holst, Jesus, Julius Caesar, Kent, Loeb Classical Library, love, Marcus Aurelius, Moravia, Morocco, music, Nick Cave, Odeon, Oxford, painting, religion, Rich Hardcastle, Ridley Scott, Rome, Royal Albert Hall, Russell Crowe, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Suffolk, Surrey, tattoos, The Critic, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts, war, YouTube | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, May 11, 2020

. One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Wednesday, August 29 1906 . Globalisation is going into reverse. The (great) auk became extinct because he forgot how to fly. Your underpants contain cellulose. In the medieval period, walking through a labyrinth or [...]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Africa, aristocracy, auks, Australia, chemistry, clothing, crime, death, diamonds, Europe, fear, genealogy, globalisation, Greenland, Herodotus, hunting, Jeff Bezos, Jerusalem, keyboards, labyrinths, money, Nelson Evening Mail, poker, satire, the Bible, the Koran, walking | Comments (0)

Selassie come home

Thursday, February 6, 2020

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste Canongate, £16.99, pp. 428 . In 1935 the troops of Benito Mussolini’s sinister-clownish Roman Empire II invaded Ethiopia, in large part out of spite for Italy’s embarrassing defeat there 40 years before. Initially largely uncontested – thanks both to emperor Haile Selassie’s desperate faith in international brotherhood and to [...]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Abysinnia, Adwa, Andy McNab, Canongate, death, dragons, Ethiopia, fiction, gas, Haile Selassie, Homer, Italians, Maaza Mengiste, Mussolini, photography, sex, the Bible, the Derg, The Spectator, Verdi, war, women, WW2 | Comments (0)

You want appease of me?!

Friday, January 3, 2020

The Hitler Years: Triumph 1933-1939 by Frank McDonough Head of Zeus £30 . In the early- to mid-1930s my grandmother (Irish, South African, later Australian) lived for a few years in the east of Germany, as a language assistant/housemistress in a boarding school. Her one recorded comment about Hitler’s accession to power was that he [...]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Frank McDonough, Germany, grandmothers, Head of Zeus, Hitler, Nazism, non-fiction, The Oldie, war | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, December 2, 2019

. There are more kilts in London than in Scotland. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, May 9 1907 . At 45% of the population, white Christians are a shrinking demographic in America. Hermal eggings are so leek. No sensitive person would choose to be the historian of the Irish asylums in the first part of the [...]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged America, children, clothing, drink, ducks, English, food, goldfish, health, Hegel, holidays, humour, London, madness, Nelson Evening Mail, new, politics, religion, Rioja, Robert Southey, Russia, satire, Scotland, Smak, Spinoza, the Irish, WG Grace | Comments (0)

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)