Here I shall be posting some of the better articles I’ve read on the ongoing British nightmare that David Cameron has bequeathed to us Brexit and our cultural identity. After the vote The historian Mary Beard reflects on whether Brexit will change our cultural identity BBC Radio4 A Point of View Remain Supporters’ Despair …
Photo: Wikimedia commons Previous sections of this essay: 1/4: The Map of Europe 2/4: ‘The United States of Europe’ 3/4: Human Rights 4. The concept of the European Union. The Conservatives’ irrationality and dishonesty (in that we are no longer as good as our word when we sign an agreement) is compounded by a failure …
Strange mistakes in European history & geography 4/4: The European Union Read More »
Other sections of this essay: 1/4: The Map of Europe 2/4: ‘The United States of Europe’ 4/4: The European Union 3. Human Rights It’s also worth reminding ourselves that – even more embarrassingly for the present-day Conservatives – Churchill was the instigator of the modern concept of human rights in Europe. In October 1942, he …
Strange mistakes in European history & geography 3/4: Human rights Read More »
Other sections of this essay: 1/4: The Map of Europe 3/4: Human Rights 4/4: The European Union 2. Churchill’s concept of a ‘United States of Europe’. Mr. Cameron, who first gained power under the false pretence of being a rational, ‘small-c’ conservative, is now the veritable puppet-king of a new Little England that has a …
Strange mistakes in European history & geography 2/4: ‘The United States of Europe’ Read More »
Later sections of this essay: 2/4: ‘The United States of Europe’ 3/4: Human Rights 4/4: The European Union 1. The territorial concept of Europe Since when was Europe a separate entity that started the other side of the English Channel? I can remember very well the kind of map of Europe that was hung on …
Strange mistakes in European history and geography 1/4: The map of Europe Read More »
[with apologies for the appalling title pun … :)] Last week, from 28 Sept – 1 Oct, I had an unusually rich four days in the hills with a reunion of Freda’s old University of East Anglia Mountaineering Club friends in an excellent double cottage at Hulmes Vale Farm on Tideswell Moor in the High …
On this 71st anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem (17-26 September 1944), in which the 1st Airborne Division lost nearly three-quarters of its men, I have put up a new page on this web site featuring Peter Stainforth’s wartime drawings. Peter Stainforth’s wartime drawings & paintings
Surely the underlying problem with some (many? most?) politicians, like some (many? most?) notorious TV car programme presenters, is akin to tone deafness or colour blindness? Which is another way of saying they have an inability to see ‘the full picture’. As someone who attempts to see the world with the eye of an artist …
Exactly forty years ago, in my last year at the RCA Film School in London, I made a half-hour movie about Beethoven starring Tony Britton, called Out of the Labyrinth. It was never shown publicly and has lain in various cupboards and attics in six different houses. Recently I decided it would be nice to …
When my mother was dying of cancer in 1965, the very last birthday present she gave me and my twin brother John was a new ‘centenary’ edition of Edward Whymper’s classic mountaineering book, Scrambles Amongst the Alps, telling the story of the dramatic first ascent (and calamitous descent) of the Matterhorn, which was a very …
On June 30, Chris Henshall, the master in charge of climbing at Tonbridge School, invited John and I down to their end of the year climbing meet at Harrison’s Rocks. (Along with Hugh Tassell and Grenville Byford, we had been founder members of the Club in 1967, with John as the first Secretary.) This was …
Having touched on the question of style in my last blog about the elements of writing, I now want to consider it in greater detail. E.B. White, in the last chapter of The Elements of Style, turns to style in its broadest sense of what is ‘distinguished and distinguishing.’ By ‘distinguished’ he means ‘what ignites …
