Some more eccentricities of pronunciation Spanish television announcers are lax when it comes to telling the viewers about the films they interminably show. Perhaps they do it on…
Category: History of the Cinema
Lords Rampant: how the British nobility won’t lie down
Not very long ago Mr Blair and his henchmen decided that the Upper Chamber of Parliament, where matters of the day were discussed calmly instead of noisily and…
Prime Minister Lord Salisbury
Kind Hearts and Coronets is probably the best and blackest of the British 1950s comedies written for the screen. The film tells the story of an illegitimate boy…
The ‘Meiji’ Restoration & the Satsuna Rebellion
Meiji means enlightened rule, and this was shown throughout the reign of the Japanese Emperor Mitsuhito, ruling from 1868 to 1912. After the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate,…
A Seymour and a Dudley, not exactly saints
Seymour (pronounced ‘Seemer’) is a name that rings bells throughout British history. There is still a Seymour Marquess of Hertford living at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. One of…
The Battle of ‘the Bulge’
I happened to see a new DVD of an old film with this title last night. It was a typical Hollywood presentation, cost a fortune, was directed oddly…
Erich Ludendorff
Germany is a country of tradition, contrast and discipline mixed with a craving for modernity and change. The actual Chancellor is a lady from the Centre/Right…
Sparta and things Spartan
Sparta as the English call this spectacular place in the southern Peloponnese (Greece) was a city/state, and the capital of the state of Laconia. This small country was…
Some naval mutinies
The very nature of living together in ships sailing sometimes alone in a thousand square miles of ocean used to mean discomfort, hard discipline and rigid…
Gunboat diplomacy
It might well have been Lord Palmerston (twice Prime Minister of Britain, 1855- 58, 1859- 65, q.v.) who concreted this term, though gunboat diplomacy in its various…