The Fascists are coming…

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...

The men now waiting to be remembered on Platform One….

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...

Tom Watson MP is a dangerous man

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,...

Notes on a lecture – “High Treason” The background to the Casement painting by John Lavery

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,...

With his long hair and gentle ways. The first anniversary of Gavan’s passing.

I flinch from cancer stories, avert my eyes, turn my head.  Avoid.  If it's on the radio I turn down the sound, on the TV, I change the channel.   It is all too painful, I fear I will be overwhelmed. I frequently am overwhelmed.  I have, we all have, lost friends, close friends, comrades, co-worker’s, family to cancer.  It has...

Three Cities, three Airbnb’s

Florence first.  In the footsteps of Dante, of Michelangelo, of Botticelli, of the Duma and of David, of the Medici, the Ponte Vecchio, stepping back into the Renaissance.   A city of alleyways and lanes and Lambretta’s and art, the most glorious art in of all Italy, in all the world.   You would hardly be surprised,...

Four days in North Yorkshire

You can catch a bus to Ripley, from Leeds Bus station. Number 36.  It takes you all across the dales to North Yorkshire and drops you off right outside the Boars Head in Ripley, which was where I was staying for a four-day Yorkshire Break.  Ripley is one of those handsome stone built Yorkshire villages...

Aye Elvis.

I went to see “Aye, Elvis”.   It was such good fun. It’s a  musical.  So poignant ,  I laughed tears and wept at the pathos.   A Scottish woman, leading desperately lonely life, looking after her wheelchair bound mother, working for next to nothing as a checkout girl at the local supermarket, not well educated but...

Private Peaceful – review.

Morpurgo;s  Private Peaceful is very disappointing.   Perhaps we expected too much after the stunning writing of War Horse, , its astonishing stage production and the film.  Or perhaps World War 1, as a vehicle for drama has passed its peak and needs to take a rest. Of course one reason may be that without the...