"Unprovided with original learning, uninformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a blog”
Every year, for the god knows how many years now, we take a house, for the whole of August, in Edinburgh, for the Festivals. In recent years it has been a gorgeous eighteenth-century property on the ancient and cobbled George Square, complete with chandeliers and a vaulted basement dining room and loads of bedrooms for... Continue Reading →
This is the view from the balcony of my Dublin apartment at Steven’s Gate, James’s Street, Dublin 8. It’s a stunning industrial landscape, millions of pints of Guinness in thousands upon thousands of barrels, stacked all the way down to the quays and the river Liffey in an impressive view from the ridge that is... Continue Reading →
There is an element of despair in remaining a member of the Labour Party. The leadership campaign is utter vanilla, entirely without life. The Tories always have more exciting and contested leadership battles, that’s a given, but this is tediously vanilla. I have been a party member for donkey’s years. Always on the left. I... Continue Reading →
Several years ago I penned a piece about traffic warden John Hancock, a man who i thought to be, and still do, a proper Nottingham character, someone who contributed a unique slice of spice to our somewhat dullish lives. He was not well pleased with the piece, not angry, but not well pleased. There were... Continue Reading →
We dined, Patricia and I, at the First Coast restaurant on the Dalry Road in Edinburgh. ( prononced Dalrye) So good was the food and the experience that I was moved to write a poem in praise of such a feast of meats. Apoligies to Rabbi Burns. A Poem with an asterisk* Cone all ye... Continue Reading →
The fascists are coming. New fascists, authoritarian, intolerant, ruthless. They will not be wearing brown shirts, nor, for Ireland, blue shirts*. They will be clad in shirts of hemp, or perhaps suits of hemp; possibly green hemp, or maybe blue; not jackboots but comfortable footwear, eco-friendly, non-leather, organic. They will be of the state, by... Continue Reading →
I must have walked past the war memorial on platform one of Paddington station a hundred times or more. It’s a very fine large bronze of a WWI soldier, designed by Charles Sargeant Jagger. He is well wrapped up against the cold and rain, wearing his steel helmet and looking down, reading a letter from... Continue Reading →
This is Field Marshall Edwin Bramall, KG, GCB, OBE, MC, JP, DL, a proper soldier’s soldier. Long before I became a member of the Labour Party, I too was a soldier. I served with Bramall in Borneo, which was a hot war, and in the cold war that was Europe. I never met another soldier,... Continue Reading →
Please note these are lecture notes designed for an illustrated lecture. Not all the images used in the lecture are included in the notes and therefore the prose may appear a bit clunky at times. The notes are probably more useful for delivery of the lecture than a straightforward read! In the early months of the first world war,... Continue Reading →
