It is now an independent socialist/communist state bordered to the east by the South China Sea, and to the west by Laos and Cambodia. Dominated by China for…
Author: Dean Swift
‘Dean Swift’ is a pen name: the author has been a soldier; he has worked in sales, TV, the making of films, as a teacher of English and history and a journalist. He is married with three grown-up children. They live in Spain.
The Tudors
I do not refer to the hideous filmed television series of the same name, designed more as pornography for sexually deprived viewers than students of England’s history. I…
Juan Prim y Prats
If he had not been assassinated, this 19th century Spanish soldier and politician would probably have been forgotten, but as his death added to the unattractive list of…
Some classic outtakes in the cinema
It is possible that these tales of fubs and fumblings are apocryphal, but as they have been repeated numberless times in the comparatively closed world of the film…
Transportation & the penal Settlements
At the end of the sixteenth century English prisons were showing signs of collapse. Thanks to absolute monarchs like Henry VIII, plus the warring sections of the Church,…
The Official Secrets Act (Gt. Britain, 1911)
One of the strongest inducements to British persons who work for, or have worked for a government department connected with the Foreign Office is the Official Secrets Act,…
The last King of Poland
Poland is one of the European countries whose peoples have suffered terribly throughout the centuries simply because of the country’s geographical position on the map, or because of…
The Pentagon Papers
More than forty documents detailing United States involvement in the East, with the emphasis on Indochina, starting during the Second World War and finishing around May, 1968. Students…
Quotable quotes from Winston Churchill (1864-1965, edited)
He is one of those orators of whom it was well said, ‘Before they get up, they do not know what they are going to say; when they…
The Japanese Peace Constitution (1947)
After the horrific end of World War II in the East, the Japanese decided to replace the draconian Meiji Constitution agreed to in 1889. But the new draft…