In Greece the 1967 coup d’état drove King Constantine of the Hellenes and his family first to Rome, and then the comparatively Arcadian peace of London, where his British…
Three Roman Emperors: Hadrian, Tiberius & Julian
Publius Aelius Hadrianus was born just seventy-six years after the birth of Christ, his birthplace Spain, or what was then the Iberian Peninsula. Member of a patrician family,…
History of the Cinema: the first ‘Casino Royale’
During the 1960s, determined producers Charlie Feldman and Jerry Bresler set out on a saga that left even Hollywood astonished. They wanted to film the first of the…
Great Sauces: Béarnaise
This sauce goes marvellously well with any good cut of red meat, such as fillet, sirloin, entrecôte, rump and T-bone. But it is also superb with rich kinds…
Julius Caesar & the Caesars
Gaius Julius Caesar was a successful general and apparently reluctant dictator. He was born into a patrician family around 100 BC and became Pontifex Maximus (a species of…
The Roman Civil Wars
These internal conflicts that tortured the last century of the Roman Republic lasted from 88 BC to 28 AD and led directly (some would say inevitably) to the…
History of the Cinema: ‘The Wild Geese’
In 1978 ‘the last gentleman producer’ Euan Lloyd made one of the funniest films on record. It was not meant to be funny. The theme was well-tried; a…
Romanticism
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…
Sicily & the ‘Sicilian Vespers’
Sicily is the biggest island in the Mediterranean Sea, in the southernmost part of Italy, opposite ‘the toe of the boot’. The island is separated from the Calabrian…
The History and making of great Sauces: Mayonnaise
Mayonnaise, however you like to spell it, is at least two hundred and fifty years old. It is said to have been invented by The Duc de Richelieu’s…