In Spain, Mr Rajoy and his team are slowly and laboriously edging their country back to sanity and a more stable economy, though the process will be long and tedious. Hercules cleaning up those Augean stables was child’s play compared with Spain’s newly elected government’s tasks. (more…)
Caine in The Ipcress File produced by Harry Saltzman / esbilla.wordpress.com
We’ve been having a bit of a Michael Caine season recently. We’ve seen the masterpiece Sleuth, the original of course, with old Sir Laurence pitted against young Mr. Caine (a simply dreadful remake was thrust upon us recently). Then there was the even younger Caine in Zulu, in which acted the father of Mr Blair’s terrible wife, name of Anthony Booth, whom I remember as a bit of a drunk, but then who wasn’t in the Sixties? In Zulu Michael Caine produced an false Etonian accent that jarred a bit, but does the stiff-upper-lip well. And then we watched the movies produced by Harry Saltzman that struck a certain note; a certain frisson. What was it about The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin and Billion Dollar Brain that strikes you and won’t let you go? (more…)
The word comes from the Latin, as do so many words connected with the Law. Nevertheless, the law of primogeniture is still operative in many originally Anglo/Saxon states, whereas it has been partially phased out in Latin ones: with notable and sometimes peculiar exceptions.
It means ‘the condition of being first-born’. It is the system whereby the estate of the father descends to the oldest son to the exclusion of any other children, legitimate or otherwise. In England this apparently unfair law was introduced from Western Europe in the late 11th century by Norman lawyers. It was a means by which the landed wealth of the barons could be preserved intact as the basis of their (the barons’) military duties and service to the Crown. (more…)
Everyone who bothered about such things was delighted that a new young teacher, female, distinguished at the university, liberal in outlook, and an active member of the local Socialist Party would start the new term at the State school as a member of the teaching staff.
She was perfectly able (and qualified) to teach a number of subjects. The Head Teacher gave her a notoriously difficult class, 5b, to launch her into the mine-strewn fields of elementary school teaching. The subject was History. After subduing the customary row that greeted a new teacher, by the simple method of talking in a gradually decreasing tone to the pupils until they stopped gassing altogether – so that they could hear her voice – she asked for questions. (more…)
‘Legend has it . . .’ and most of Man’s legends are thousands of years old. The Dragon, for instance, has been around for centuries, in art and tales told by men. Dragons do not exist, that we know for certain, and yet the fable of St. George and his Dragon gave us a patron saint of England who was not actually English, and the dragons appearing in heraldry for more than a thousand years. Did the idea of dragons, as huge lizards with wings and breathing fire come from Neanderthal (and imaginative) man finding fossils of the pterodactyl – which certainly existed – but hundred of millions of years ago. Perhaps the legendary Monster of Loch Ness is a subaqueous dragon. (more…)
From the late 18th to the middle of the 19th century there was an almost radical revolt against simple reasoning, the sciences, all authority and most traditions, against order and discipline, which overcame (and to a certain extent subdued) Western civilisation. This was the sweeping movement of Romanticism.
It meant social, political and moral reform, yes, but manifested itself above all in the arts; one could claim that the two major extremes of art are Classicism and Romanticism. Subsequent movements are generally regarded as being associated with one or the other. (more…)
This sketch of the Admiral’s execution appeared in The London Magazine /
George Byng, Viscount Torrington was born in 1663. After school education he headed straight for the Royal Navy to make his name as a sailor. Having a nose for politics, he made himself agreeable to William of Orange (q.v.) and quickly became an Admiral.
George Byng’s most prominent successes as a sailor took place during the Wars of the Spanish Succession (q.v.), especially in 1718 at Cape Passaro, where the fleet he commanded managed the extraordinary feat of sinking an entire enemy squadron which had had the intention of making a landfall in Sicily prior to an invasion. (more…)
We see on the daily news programmes that ‘Los Indignados’ have returned to the Puerta del Sol and the Plaza de Cataluña in Spain, and various other municipal hot points in Europe, to celebrate an anniversary. It was in May last year that European city-dwellers learned to put up with their plazas and places filled to saturation with the young and the old, of every sex, of every class, of every profession, setting up camp, breaking out the same tired old political cant on badly spelled, cheaply printed placards. These are the ‘Indignants’. (more…)
Though more people travel regularly by air than ever before; while international airports spring up at vast cost though not required (Spain has recently built two particularly pungent examples of this kind of wastage – the new airports at Ciudad Real and on the island of La Gomera – both airports entertaining virtually no air traffic at all); although air travel is considered probably rightly as the safest form of travel; though London/New York (6000 miles) can be achieved effortlessly (it’s the aircraft I’m talking about, not the passengers) in not much more than 6½ hours . . . why the Devil does air travel have to be so uncomfortable, so inefficient (at the airports), so people-unfriendly, so disgustingly unhygienic, so time-wasting (at the airports), so unpredictable, and above all so DISHONEST? (more…)
I feel a degree of sympathy for the ex-President of the Government in Spain. What can he do on Sundays? His agnostic wife Sonsoles goes off to sing with her church choir, perhaps returns to lunch? I assume his gothick daughters have their own agenda on the Day of Rest: there are cauldrons and incantations; blasted heaths can be found near Madrid. After nearly eight years of solitary power in one of the most important member/countries of the European Union, to be shoved off the throne by a resurrected Rasputin must be, to put it simply, an Ishoo. (more…)