Monthly Archives: April 2017

Well, Corbyn has got to say he welcomes an early election, hasn’t he? Otherwise he appears ‘frit’ (to use Thatcher’s schoolgirl term). But it does look strictly unnecessary – the government is in no immediate danger – and merely opportunistic, … Continue reading →

Theresa May has come in for a lot of stick recently for her religious views: firstly for complaining at Cadbury’s not calling their chocolate eggs ‘Easter Eggs’, to remind us of the sacrifice of our dear Lord; and secondly for … Continue reading →

‘MOAB’ – the ‘mother of all bombs’. The biggest non-nuclear bomb ever, apparently, now hurled at Afghanistan. I always thought we were unwise to make jokes about the putative size of Trump’s member; is this his reply? And if so, … Continue reading →

This was the paper I delivered in Genoa last week, lightly edited, and without the powerpoint pics – which added to the fun. Hence its longer-than-average length. (It ran for fifty minutes.) The conference, or ‘Festival’, had ‘Empires’ as its … Continue reading →

No-one does towns and cities like the Italians. It must be an instinct embedded in them over the centuries: fine palaces, churches, habitations, all designed with perfect proportions – which is in my view the main quality defining great architecture … Continue reading →

We were in Genoa when we first heard of Friday’s Stockholm killings. Reports from Kajsa’s friends and relatives talked of smoke coming from the store the truck crashed into, public transport closed down, people rushing around on foot, and the inevitable rumours … Continue reading →

will be resumed once I’ve got over my Italian trip. And if I can get wi-fi where we’re going now. I should really be reporting on the Stockholm ‘terrorist’ incident; but I was away at the time.

I find mildly interesting the number of times that, having posted a blog here, I find the same arguments repeated shortly afterwards in a national press article. Here’s the latest example: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/04/my-generation-free-brexit-voting-betraying-young; with which compare https://bernardjporter.com/2017/03/29/brexit-unfair-to-the-young/. Polly Toynbee’s article is far … Continue reading →

Writing as a feminist (am I allowed to?), we shouldn’t do the Victorians down. They had plenty of female role models, and not all of them nurses, mothers or the Queen – see Grace Darling. Researching children’s and young adults’ literature … Continue reading →