I’m not saying the Falklands is a tiny place, but… in the course of one day, last month, in the newly-anointed city of Stanley, I had my hair cut by one international athlete and then my passport processed by another. Soon-to-be international athletes, anyway. They’re both part of the Islands’ team for this year’s Commonwealth […]
On the late, great Christopher Hitchens, and the role the Falklands may have played in his political development. — For The Critic
Filed in correspondence, Journalism
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Also tagged 9/11, Admiral Graf von Spee, Adolf Hitler, Afghanistan, Africa, Alexander Haig, Argentina, Barack Obama, Battle Day, Borges, Britain, Caspar Weinberger, Christopher Hitchens, coffee, Commander Eric Hitchens, conservatives, Cossacks, Covid, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Cyprus, Denis MacShane, Falklands Radio, football, Goose Green, Hector Timerman, Holland, Human Rights Watch, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jacobo Timerman, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Jews, Jorge Videla, Journalism, La Opinion, Lebanon, Lincoln's Inn, Lt Nick Taylor, Margaret Thatcher, Nazis, New York, Nicholas Henderson, Palestine, Robert Cox, Ronald Reagan, Salman Rushdie, terrorism, The Critic, The Falklands War, the Inquisition, the Junta, the left wing, the Mediterranean, The Nation, The New Statesman, the Pacific, the Royal Navy, the UN, the Union Jack, Ukraine, Washington DC, WWI, WWII
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The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids Pierre Tallet and Mark Lehner Thames & Hudson £30 319pp (1.216kg) . Because I once made the mistake of dabbling a bit in Egyptology, no less than every other week – in the year 2022 – some friend (‘…’) will schwack me […]
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, 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, Theodore Dreiser, trench coats, Winsconsin, WW2
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Notes on the life (and afterlife) of JS Mill, philosopher . The classical liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill was born and died this month – in, respectively, 1806 and 1873 – and in between he wrote (or co-wrote, with his wife, and then his step-daughter) On Liberty, Utilitarianism, Principles of Political Economy, Considerations of Representative Government, […]
Filed in correspondence, Journalism
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Also tagged Amazon Kindle, Avignon, Bertrand Russell, bookshops, champagne, Charles Darwin, Colombo, death, Dilsiri Welikala, economics, education, Edward 'Clerihew' Bentley, Eliza Jarvis, Falkland Islands Radio Service, finance, Florence Nightingale, France, Frederick Langmead, furniture, GF Watts, Greek, Harriet Taylor Mill, health, Helen Taylor, Homer, housing, India, James Mill, Jean-Henri Fabre, Jeremy Bentham, John Milton, John Stuart Mill, Journalism, Joy Lo Dico, Kalpitiya, Latin, Matt RIdley, medicine, Millicent Fawcett, Monty Python, obituaries, philosophy, politics, Rupert Jarvis, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sri Lanka, the Chapman brothers, the East India Company, the Falklands, the London Stereoscopic Company, The Times, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle, Tom Holland, UCL, Utilitarianism, Vernon Bogdanor, Westminster, women, writing
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Review of Alexandria: the Quest for the Lost City, by Edmund Richardson. — For The Spectator
Filed in Journalism, review
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Also tagged Afghanistan, Alexander (‘the Great’), Alexander Burnes, army, Bagram, Bamiyan, Bengal, Bombay, books, Buddhism, Charles Masson, China, Edmund Richardson, Harappa, India, Josiah Harlan, Kabul, Kharosthi, London, Macedonia, non-fiction, Pakistan, spies, the British Museum, the East India Company, the Great Game, the Hindu Kush, tigers, war, William Loveday
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. A banker’s license in the United Kingdom costs £30 per annum. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Friday, July 17 1908 . Sri Lanka has only 500 cases of the Coronavirus. Germany has no elite universities. There are a lot of porno videos featuring Scarlett Johansson’s face. Mexico City is a good place to be an […]
Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE
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Also tagged America, army, boys, Chaucer, coronavirus, Danes, education, finance, Genghis Khan, Germany, Hamlet, health, Journalism, Mexico, Muslims, Nelson Evening Mail, Olympics, pornography, potatoes, satire, Scarlett Johansson, Scooby-Doo, Simone Biles, space travel, sport, Sri Lanka, Søren Kierkegaard, the internet, the Maldives, the UK, writers
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Or; Some Further Notes Towards the Bestiary To the researches of the antiquary and scholar Jorge Luis ‘Vintage’ Borges, a few points offer further context on that most peripatetic of birds in this, our present century. . Learned reports come from South Asia, where the spotted-bill Filipino pelican (phillipensis) is found, with no small irony, only in Cambodia, the Indian peninsular, and in Sri Lanka (or the contemporary […]
Filed in Fictions
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Also tagged America, animals, army, babies, basketball, Borges, British Library, Cambodia, Captain Scott, children, Colombo, Corpus Christi College, daughters, death, Egypt, employment, fables, food, Gartagena, General John Guise, Hebrew, hieroglyphs, Horapollo, India, Jesuits, John Grisham, Joseph Hall, King Lear, murder, oil, pelican, Post-modern Bestiary, psychology, Roald Dahl, Spain, Sri Lanka, St James's Palace, St James's Park, St Jerome, stupidity, the Bible, Thomas Aquinas, US Supreme Court
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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, history, Homer, Italians, Maaza Mengiste, Mussolini, photography, sex, the Bible, the Derg, Verdi, war, women, WW2
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Wednesday, January 8, 2020
The curious life of John Stuart Mill, philosopher . When JS Mill was born, his father, James, challenged a friend to ‘race with you in the education of… the most accomplished and virtuous young man.’ That other child has not gone down in history – but he may well have dodged a serious bullet. Learning […]
Filed in feature, Journalism
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Also tagged Avignon, Bertrand Russell, Blackadder, crime, education, Edward 'Clerihew' Bentley, England, fathers, Florence Nightingale, France, Greek, India, James Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Milton, Journalism, JS Mill, love, Milicent Fawcett, Monty Python, philosophy, Poetry, politics, Reading, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Smith, sons, the East India Company, the Liberal Party, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Thomas Carlyle, UCL, Utilitarianism, women's suffrage, Wordsworth
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