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An irony

Saturday, March 3, 2018

South Africa is not on Zulu Time.

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged GMT, irony, micro-non-fiction, South Africa, time, Zulus | 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, Bengal Native Infantry, Brigadier-General John Nicholson, British Empire, colonialism, death, geography, history, 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)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, December 25, 2017

. More than nine-tenths of the railway passengers in England travel third-class. — The Nelson Evening Mail, October 20 1906 . ‘The is cat washing dishes’ is an 18th-century expression for the reflection of water on the walls of a room. A skate’s vagina is anatomically similar to a woman’s. Just because a thing is true does not mean that […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged (il)literacy, 18th century, accommodation, age, anatomy, Batman, Ben Affleck, brothers, Canterbury, Casey Affleck, cats, Chartham, children, Christmas, de Lesseps, democracy, Die Hard, drink, Egypt, employment, film, fish, Italian, Nelson Evening Mail, paper, Roy William Scranton, sex, steel, Suez Crisis, Superman, Tennessee Williams, The Fratellis, the Soviet Union, train-travel, Truth, water, women, writers | Comments (0)

A hero’s welcome

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Dunkirk – THE UNTOLD STORY!! — For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged 11th Armoured Division, 51st Highland Division, 97th (Kent Yeomanry) Field Regiment, British Expeditionary Force, Canterbury, champagne, Channel Islands, cricket, Croix de Guerre, D-Day, Dunkirk, Elsie Adeline Cockersell, film, France, Germans, incarceration, James Kingford Carson, Kent, livery companies, love, moustaches, Nazis, Normandy, Royal Artillery, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, sea-faring, St Valery-en-Caux, The Oldie, war, women, Yorkshire | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, December 11, 2017

. For use during military manoeuvres the Kaiser has a portable house, made of asbestos. — The Nelson Evening Mail, June 22 1909 . A six-year-old has become a multimillionaire, reviewing toys on YouTube. The US has the world’s 2nd highest prison population, with 693 prisoners per 100,000. Icelandic sea cucumbers fetch £438 per kilogram. ‘Word up’ […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged America, asbestos, burgers, children, death, employment, finance, Gary Ross Dahl, Iceland, incarceration, Israel, livery companies, Matt Berry, Nelson Evening Mail, painting, Peter Hitchens, pets, politics, poulters, radio, Reeva Steenkamp, seafood, sex, the Kaiser, toys, women, YouTube | Comments (0)

Mortality 101 – or; Catullus at the graveside

Saturday, November 11, 2017

The Oldie runs my poem for the Armistice commemorations. — For The Oldie

Filed in Poetry, Translation | Also tagged Armistice Day, brothers, Catullus, death, Latin, The Oldie, Troy, war | Comments (0)

I ink, therefore I am

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

On the choice and acquisition of my one and only tattoo. — For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Afghanistan, Anthony McGowan, Asterix, buffalos, Classics, Cleopatra, Egyptology, Elizabeth Taylor, gladiators, Greek, Latin, men, mothers, opera, Oxford, Rome, Russell Crowe, Samoan, sewerage, South Africa, SPQR, tattoos, The Oldie, war | Comments (0)

An Oxford squaddie

Saturday, October 14, 2017

From deer park to gun park… . Sixteen years ago, American and British forces hurled themselves into Afghanistan the same week I arrived at Magdalen College, Oxford. I didn’t give them much thought – although the ‘War on Terror’ was immediately everywhere. I had an Egyptology degree to get to grips with; and choral evensong […]

Filed in feature, Journalism | Also tagged Afghanistan, education, Frank Ledwidge, George MacDonald Fraser, Honourable Artillery Company, Max Boot, me, Oxford University, singing, TE Lawrence, The Oldie, war, Yorkshire | Comments (0)

Turning Japanese stomachs

Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima Penguin, 170pp, £8.99 . Born two years after the Great Earthquake of 1923, in ‘not too good a section of Tokyo’, Kochan is a sickly child, brought up by stultifying parents and a morbid grandmother. His first reliable memory is of the ‘night-soil’ man, and he immediately becomes […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged autobiography, education, Guido Reni, homosexuality, Japan, JK Huysmans, Joan of Arc, Magnus Hirschfeld, Nobel Prize for Literature, novels, Oscar Wilde, sex, suicide, The Amorist, transvestism, violence, war, WW2, Yukio Mishima | Comments (0)

Veterans of modern wars

Tuesday, October 10, 2017

In a mid-September interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Baron Richards of Herstmonceux (GCB, CBE, DSO, DL – better known as General David Richards, former Chief of the Defence Staff) made a comment to the effect that “a part-time soldier cannot be as effective as someone who’s devoted his life to it and puts on a […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Afghanistan, Baron Richards of Herstmonceux, Brigadier James Roddis, Bruce Dickinson, children, David Dickinson, death, Ed Drummond-Baxter, employment, food, Honourable Artillery Company, Iraq, Iron Maiden, Jack Sadler, Ted Heath, The Oldie, war | Comments (0)