I know, everyone is saying it, everyone is annoyed, horrified and shocked by it but….. that man!!! No not the policeman in charge of anti-terrorism in the UK, who unthinkingly, foolishly and potentially dangerously, went to a briefing with the…
Before going to Iraq to boost his troops morale, President Obama said: “Let me say this as clearly as I can; the United States is not at war with Islam.” He was in Turkey, that country on the border of…
This is the 100th. day I have been publishing this website and the 100th. day of the blog. OK, it is not like The 100 Days, the period when Napoleon returned from exile before he was defeated at the Battle…
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever, wrote Keats who like Shakespeare had a way of coining phrases which sound like they have always been with us. Well, in some cases they were just nicking other people’s cliches…
There has been an inquest last week for a man who killed his wife and teenage daughter and then burnt down his substantial mansion before killing himself. The inquest was told that the man had lost his money when his…
Whilst President Sarkozy of France was hosting the NATO summit and saying unhelpful things about President Obama’s request for more NATO support in the war in Afghanistan, I was listening to a more eloquent Frenchman, Hector Berlioz. Nicolas Sarkozy said…
I went out last night. So what? you will probably say. Well it was the first time I have been out….like really out…for over five months. I went out into the big town, Brighton in East Sussex, one of the…
Now forgive me. Excusez-moi. Entschudigen. I love a lot of things about Germany and France. I have traveled to both countries many times, I have struggled to speak both languages, and I have been an absorbed student of their history…
Sometimes chaos reigns no matter what you do. It was that butterfly somewhere across the seas fluttering its wings and setting all this into play that created the muddle which is my desk. Now the question is not “To be…
Monday mornings these days are usually devoted to learning Mandarin Chinese and having a one to one kung fu lesson. Yesterday though, a touch of lurgy maybe, an aching back, a few symptoms of brain damage and the arrival of…