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
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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
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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 [...]
. 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
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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
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Thursday, October 10, 2019
Review of Justin Marozzi’s Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities that Define a Civilization. – For Geographical
Filed in Journalism, review
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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
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. 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
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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
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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
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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
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Wednesday, October 31, 2018
On Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking with Destiny. – For The Oldie
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
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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
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A footsoldier’s review of Antony Beevor’s Arnhem: the Battle for the Bridges, 1944. – For The Oldie
Filed in Journalism, review
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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
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. 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
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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
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