The Gowrie House Affair: and the assassin’s knife
Gowrie House, near Perth / cottage.perth.blogspot.com Breaking News: August 1600 (News agency reports) “Astonishing news is coming in from the city of Perth. The reports are confused, and confusing, but it appears that [...]
The Great Millennium Mistake
I owe this to Simon Raven. In one of his works he speaks of the legend of Cape Tainarus in Greece. There is a dreaded cave there, dreaded because the dead emerge from this cave [...]
Palmerston and Canning
Lord Palmerston / yalebooks.wordpress.com Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston was born in 1784. George Canning was born in 1770. Neither man saw much point in the other, and the difference of fourteen [...]
Queen Victoria & the European royal families
Victoria, the ‘grandmother of Europe’ / britroyals.com Nearly all the royal families in Europe – those remaining – are related to each other. This is not a coincidence, and it is worth considering, [...]
Two Wilhelms of Prussia
Wilhelm II / telegraph.co.uk Prussia as a separate State merged, with many other Germanic kingdoms, grand dukedoms and principalities into a united Germany. But Prussia had a great deal of history beforehand. Just [...]
Two grand opera composers: Wagner & Verdi
Richard Wagner / javeriana.edu.co Professional music critics tend to bicker over the greatness or otherwise of these two composers, born as almost exact contempories, within months of each other in 1813. Wagner was [...]
The Englishman abroad: aspects of the typical British tourist over two centuries
The Englishman abroad: aspects of the typical British tourist over two centuries In the 18th and 19th centuries, two kinds of Englishman ‘went abroad’, or left Britain for a period. The first of these was the [...]
Belligerent British India: the Anglo-Afghan Wars & the Anglo-Burmese Wars
It is a much-noted historical fact (not a notion) that countries seeking empires require violent methods to keep them – once formed. Great Britain has not been backward in this respect. She may have been [...]
Disadvantages of being English and old
One of these (there are many others) is the question of communication if you are British and over fifty-five, with someone equally British but under thirty-five. Multitudes of Brits visit the Atlantic island where I [...]
Piracy
Too late to repel boarders! / en.wikipedia.org Piracy, or the practice of robbery and murder on the high seas, is in the news again. Merchant ships and even private yachts are being attacked [...]
The U.S.S.R.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (also known as the Soviet Union) used to occupy all the northern part of Asia, and a substantial part of Eastern Europe. Under that name, what was before, and [...]
The University
A corner of the University of Santiago, Spain, one of the oldest universities in the world / tuhostal.com It is an institute of higher education, responsible for taking students from the schools and [...]
Another Godless Christmas
It is the 17 December, 2011. In seven days virtually all the countries in the world will begin a few days off work (if they have any) on a holiday that will extend to the [...]
Spain: the Shadow of a Republic
Iñaki Urdangarin is the King and Queen of Spain’s son-in-law. This retired athlete married the Infanta Cristina, and they have four bright-looking children, three boys and a girl. The media seem determined to destroy him, [...]
Ronald Reagan
/ es.doblaje,wikia,com The fortieth President of the United States was born in 1911. He grew up to be a college athlete and a handsome actor in Hollywood movies, westerns in particular. He was [...]
The Pilgrimage of Grace & The Pilgrim Fathers
The pilgrimage ‘of Grace’ / channel4.com Pilgrimage of Grace is a euphemism for an outbreak of rebellions in the northern counties of England in 1536/7. The most prominent of these was led by [...]
Waterloo
The struggle for the farmhouse at Hougoumont, Waterloo 1815 / handpaintedsoldiers.com The battle that brought the Napoleonic Wars to a much awaited end took place around 18 June, 1815. Those involved in the [...]
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