Category: Literature

Catch a Clipper

In 1961 you either had to have a vaccination certificate or quarantine for fourteen days if you arrived in the US from the UK. But you know that, because you read it here in 2017. It looks like next year that’s what will happen again; that’s if an effective vaccine is found. It’s a funny… Continue reading Catch a Clipper

Sir Oswald

This portrait of Field Marshal Lord Alexander is by Sir Oswald Birley. As I am more familiar with his grandson, Robin, who I remember starting out selling posh sandwiches to me in the City before taking on his father’s business, running clubs for people with money in abundance but sometimes insufficient in other more desirable… Continue reading Sir Oswald

Out to Lunch

Keith Waterhouse is very particular about what lunch is not: ‘It is not prawn cocktail, steak and Black Forest gateau with your bank manger.

Top Secret

I haven’t read Samuel Pepys, The Unequalled Self, by Claire Tomalin since it was published eighteen years ago. It is very good. You will be aware that Pepys wrote his diary for only a decade, the 1660s, and wrote in shorthand to keep the contents secret from prying eyes. He had a point.

The Battle of Bouvines

The Battle of Bouvines is not one of those famous battles like Agincourt, Crécy, Blenheim, Waterloo, El Alamein. This is simply because, in spite of being in an alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor, Otto IV, and having numerical superiority the English army was given a good beating by King Philip Augustus of France. As… Continue reading The Battle of Bouvines

Alan Brooke’s War

Colville’s Downing Street Diaries have led me on to General, Sir Alan Brooke’s wartime diaries. He later became Field Marshal, Viscount Alanbrooke, slightly confusingly. The diaries are a daily record of his war.

Wartime Reading List

John Colville’s Downing Street Diaries are not what they seem He could be taken to task under the Trade Descriptions Act (1968) as on the first page he “was living in luxury, at least by war-time standards, and basking in the Prime Minister’s favour.”

Quizzers

I have just bought an inexpensive, second-hand, dog-eared  paperback published in 1987 in which are appended the author’s biographical notes on some of the people mentioned. Can you identify even one of them?

Something Fresh

As it’s Sunday we will do Bible study. The Gutenberg Bible, as you know, was one of the earliest books to be  “mass” printed using moveable, metal type. Fewer than 200 copies ran off Gutenberg’s press at Mainz in the mid 15th century; one uxorious frog could do better in the tadpole department, and as… Continue reading Something Fresh