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Tag Archives: Communism

Kreises of conscience

Saturday, August 21, 2021

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days The True Story of the Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner Canongate, £16.99, pp576 . In 1928, modest young blue-collar English lecturer Mildred Fish arrives in Berlin to begin her PhD in American Literature. In the febrile, polyglot atmosphere at the […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, America, Berlin, biography, Canongate, capitalism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, France, Goethe, Great Britain, history, Hjalmar Schacht, Jews, John Dos Passos, Joseph Goebbels, literature, Lufthansa, Mildred Harnack, non-fiction, Operation Barbarossa, Operation Walkyrie, Plötzensee Prison, propaganda, Rebecca Donner, Rebecca West, spies, Stalin, the Soviet Union, The Spectator, Theodore Dreiser, trench coats, Winsconsin, WW2 | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, September 21, 2020

. Forty Popes have lived less than a year after their election. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Friday, January 18 1907 . Ethiopia has exported its first avocados by train. The Communist Party banned photocopiers. More geese than swans now live. In Brazil there is a butterfly that uses its legs for running. All Pakistani […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Alastair Cook, beer, birds, Brazil, butterflies, Cecil Court, class, coats, cricket, death, elections, Ethiopia, fruit, Great Britain, Nelson Evening Mail, news, Pakistan, photocopiers, religion, Saracens, satire, sealioning, Sir Paul McCartney, The Beatles, the internet, train-travel, William Huskisson | Comments (0)

Portrait of a ‘lady’ – Constance Markievicz, by Sarah Purser

Friday, November 30, 2018

Tonight, the Irish journalist Mary Kenny has a play on at the Irish Cultural Centre. Entitled Dearest Old Darling, it’s based on letters sent between the Dublin feminist, socialist, communist, Sinn Fein MP (elect, but never sitting) Constance Markievicz – née Gore-Booth – and her sister Eva. My great-great-great-aunt, Sarah Purser, portraitist, landscape artist, and […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Académie Julian, air travel, An Túr Gloine, aristocracy, bathing, Brendan Behan, burglary, Constance Markievicz, Count Casimir Markievicz, Douglas Hyde, Dublin, Elizabeth Coxhead, Eva Gore-Booth, exploration, feminism, France, Georgina Gore-Booth, grandmothers, Guinness, Huguenots, Ireland, Jack Yeats, James Joyce, John Butler Yeats, John O'Grady, Kathleen Kearney, Lady Gregory, landlords, letters, Lissadell, Mary Kenny, Maud Gonne, Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, National Gallery of Ireland, Oliver Gogarty, painting, politics, portraits, religion, Roger Casement, Rome, Royal Dublin Society, Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts, Sarah Purser, Sinn Fein, Sir Henry Gore-Booth, Sligo, socialism, stained glass, the Arctic, the British, the Irish Cultural Centre, theatre, Yeats | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE #3

Thursday, November 22, 2018

A little bit more idiocy from around the global village. — For Queen Mob’s Tea House

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged baseball, beauty, birds, books, Caucasians, Central Park, China, death, Fernando Po, fire, grandmothers, Joseph Conrad, knives, MAGA, manufacturing, men, MILFs, Nelson Evening Mail, New Zealand, parenthood, petroleum, politics, PornHub, potatoes, Queen Mob's Tea House, Roxy Jacenko, satire, saxophones, science, teenagers, the internet, the ocean, trivia, University of Iowa, widows, women, Yiddish | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 30, 2017

. The Queen won a first prize for bantams at the King’s Lynn Fur and Feather Society’s show. — The Nelson Evening Mail, January 6 1909 . In LA there is a chess set designed for the East India Company, featuring Sikh soldiers vs Afghans. Among a certain kind of people, being ‘passionate about Israel/Palestine’ […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged (il)literacy, Afghans, bantams, birds, Bobby Kennedy, Brett Dean, butter, chess, cricket, death, Django Reinhardt, education, England, finance, Germany, government, Iceland, Israel, King Alfred, King's Lynn, liberal arts, Los Angeles, music, Nelson Evening Mail, opera, Palestine, politics, queens, Rain Men, sailors, Sam Craft, sea-faring, sex, Sikhs, South Benfleet, tattoos, the East India Company, Tierra del Fuego, traffic, Truth, work, WWII | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 16, 2017

. Only about three in every hundred amateur novel-writers find their way into print, except at their own expense. — The Nelson Evening Mail, January 22 1907 . The erection of a verandah is a useful way to extend one’s living quarters. Seven American states observe Abraham Lincoln’s birthday as a public holiday. There is only one […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Abraham Lincoln, America, architecture, atheism, babies, Barack Obama, breasts, Britain, Chiang Kai-shek, China, Christianity, class, Comic Sans, crime, domestic affairs, education, Eskimos, finance, French, Germany, grammar, holidays, John le Carré, Judaism, Mormonism, Nelson Evening Mail, novels, religion, sharks, synthetic fibres, the Irish, the Soviet Union, translation, vision, war, writing | Comments (0)

An unsigned note

Sunday, August 27, 2017

Oldie readers will need no reminding that the heart of John le Carré’s ‘Circus’ – indeed, of his entire ouevre – is one George Smiley OBE. From Call for the Dead (in ’61) to the classic ‘Karla trilogy’, and on til (almost) the collapse of Communism, he battled foe and, sometimes, friend, quite often in […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged George Smiley, illustration, John le Carré, London, maps, Mike Hall, Penguin, publishing, spies, The Oldie, Waterstone's | Comments (0)

A Very British political drama

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

The Conservatives have been in power for years, the working man feels disenfranchised, unemployment is rife, and there’s really bad music on the radio. And then [cue: opening chords of Mozart’s Coronation Mass] Labour’s long-awaited electoral landslide, and all is right in the world! 1997? Not a bit of it. This is 1988 – at […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Alastair Campbell, Chris Mullin, DVD, Keith Allen, politics, Ray McAnally, theartsdesk, Tim McInnerny, Tony Blair, TV | Comments (0)