Review of Tracy Chevalier’s treatment of Mary Canning’s life, in Remarkable Creatures. — For Perspective
Filed in Journalism, review
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Also tagged audiobooks, Bishop Usher, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Bullock's Egyptian Hall, Deshan Tennekoon, Dickens, Dissenters, Dorset, Elizabeth Philpot, fiction, film, Geological Society, International Women's Day, John Fowles, Lyme Regis, Mary Anning, men, Oxford University, palaeontology, Perspective, poverty, religion, Saxony, science, the Bible
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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
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Also tagged Adolf Hitler, America, Berlin, biography, Canongate, capitalism, Communism, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, France, Goethe, Great Britain, 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
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My mate Howard has found a cricket ball in his aunt’s attic… — For The Critic
Filed in correspondence, Journalism
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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
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A love letter to 20 years of watching Gladiator. — For The Critic
Filed in column, Journalism
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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
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. 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
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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
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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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