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Author Archives: A S H Smyth

Great Man history

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

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

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

“A pair of…”

Saturday, October 27, 2018

‘dumplings’
‘dumpling’
‘dump’

Filed in Poetry | Tagged phone poems, Ross Brown, Samsung Galaxy S7, tits | Comments (0)

Did The English Patient send me to Afghanistan?

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Two nights from now, by way of (ahem) a birthday present, I will be attending a live-orchestra screening of The English Patient at the Albert Hall. I had invited an old friend, a raven-haired young lady (named in Debrett’s) of impossibly romantic tendency, who first exposed me to the film in, I’d say, about 1998 […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Tagged Academy Awards, Afghanistan, Ahmed Hassanein, air travel, American University in Cairo, anatomy, Anthony Minghella, Arabic, army, Banana Republic, bedouin, Benny Goodman, Booker Prize, books, bookshops, Brighton, Bruce Chatwin, Byron, Canada, Charing Cross Road, Christopher Hitchens, clothing, Debrett's, deserts, Dorset, Egypt, Egyptology, exploration, film, French Foreign Legion, Gabriel Yared, Geoff Dyer, Geographical, Geographical Journal, Herodotus, Hungarian, Hungary, JM Coetzee, John Ball, John Hare, Joseph Conrad, Justin Marozzi, Kensington Gore, Kristen Scott Thomas, László Almásy, London, Long Range Desert Group, Lorenz Hart, love, Michael Ondaatje, mountains, music, novels, Orientalism, Oscar Wilde, Oxford, Picador, plums, Ralph Bagnold, Ralph Fiennes, Ranulph Fiennes, Richard Bermann, Robert Twigger, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Geographical Society, Saul Kelly, Sinai, SOE, song, South Africa, the Himalayas, the Nile, The Oldie, the Sahara, the Western Desert, war, WG Sebald, William Golding, wind, women, WW2, YouTube, Zerzura | Comments (0)

Up diddly up, down diddly down

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Itchin’ for a Twitch Inn, at the Heritage weekend. — For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Tagged Battle of Britain, Douces Manor, Dunkirk, fine dining, Germans, graffiti, Guy Gibson, Heritage Open Days, Idi Amin, John Cunningham, Kent, Maidstone, North Downs, Peter Townsend, pubs, RAF, Tesco, The Beatles, The Dambusters, The Malling Society, The Oldie, Twitch Inn, West Malling, WW1, WW2 | Comments (0)

Brue meets gel

Tuesday, September 4, 2018

About the Bruegels on my bedroom wall. — For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Tagged AA Gill, anatomy, art, Athena International, Bath, Brussels, Carmina Burana, chickens, childhood, death, Don DeLillo, drawing, drink, etching, Flanders, Fleet Foxes, gambling, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Jürgen Müller, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Nabokov, painting, peasantry, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Bruegel the Younger, pissing, religion, TASCHEN, the Duke of Alba, the Habsburgs, The Holburne Museum, The Oldie, the Spanish Inquisition, the tower of Babel, Thomas Schauerte, Tom Frantzen, Vienna, war, weddings, WH Auden | 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 | Tagged Afghanistan, Allen Lane, America, Ancient Egypt, army, Bletchley Park, Cardinal Richelieu, China, Christianity, Christopher Andrew, Christopher Marlowe, CIA, Clausewitz, Elizabeth I, Francis Walsingham, history, 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)

Mumsnet

Friday, July 13, 2018

‘Breast milk substitute is the best milk substitute!!’

Filed in Poetry | Tagged babies, breasts, Mumsnet, the internet, The Pikey Laureate, women | Comments (0)

Litterary death match

Thursday, June 21, 2018

In the Autumn of 2014, feeling somewhat down about his wordsmithing career, uncertain in his role as model for his two sons, and with one eye on the health of his own father, Toby Litt decided to take on the oft-postponed biography of great-great-great-grandfather William. An undefeated prize-fighter and winner of 200 belts in the […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged Galley Beggar Press, The Oldie, Toby Litt | Comments (0)

M.O.’s m.o. – or; Everybody wants to be like Mike

Thursday, June 7, 2018

A review of Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight. — For The Spectator

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged crime, ethnography, fiction, Florence, geography, intelligence, Libya, London, memory, Michael Ondaatje, spies. Aramaic, St Lucia, The Spectator, the Thames, Trieste, writers, writing, WW2 | Comments (0)

Everyman, I will go with thee, and be thy Bluffer’s Guide

Monday, June 4, 2018

Last weekend I played host to a particularly friendly cricket match – by which I mean that both teams had no clue what they were doing. The opposition, Rain Men, were captained by my friend and usual team-mate Simon, whose excuse was that he’d only played the game 263 times previously. The other captain was, […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged beer, Bluffer's Guides, Boris Starling, Brexit, cats, conversation, cricket, cycling, Duckworth Lewis, Englishmen, etiquette, fishing, footnotes, Fuller Pilch, girlfriends, golf, Harry Eyres, Haynes Publishing, humour, James Trollope, Jonathan Goodall, Keith Hann, leadership, management, Marcus Berkmann, Mike Brearley, Nick Yapp, opera, Rain Men, Samuel Johnson, Serbo-Croat, social media, South Africans, Susie Boniface, Test Match Special, The Oldie, Town Malling, William Hanson, wine, wisdom | Comments (0)