Monthly Archives: October 2020

What to say?  It was so unnecessary, wasn’t it – to suspend Jeremy Corbyn from the Party for nothing worse than claiming that the ‘Labour antisemitism’ issue – genuine or not: and Corbyn never claimed that there wasn’t an issue – … Continue reading →

With no more proper historical work on hand or even on the horizon for me just now – apart from proof-reading my latest and almost certainly my last book, which is only a re-hash of old essays after all – … Continue reading →

We watched it the other day on Amazon Prime. It was as toe-curling as they warned us, and quite disgusting (sorry, but I’ve never much gone for the sight of menstrual blood); but horribly funny and brilliant. The Rudy scene … Continue reading →

That the upcoming American Presidential election is the most important for many generations hardly needs saying; determining as it may well do which of the two major trends in American history until now – the liberal-progressive (in the old European … Continue reading →

OK, we all hate parking attendants. But Sweden has some of the worst. We parked outside a Co-op store in Enskede yesterday, in a bay that was marked as free for an hour’s parking; were away – shopping – for … Continue reading →

From what I can gather from over here in the land of snow and ice – we had our first flurry of sleet this morning – Boris may be heading for a fall quite soon, with his craven incompetence plain … Continue reading →

You’ve got to hand it to Jacinda Ardern – haven’t you? A thumping victory for her Labor Party in the recent General Election; the best record in the world when it comes to the Coronavirus – only 25 deaths, compared … Continue reading →

Well, we’re in conspiracy-theory season again, if it has ever gone away in America; with Trump refusing to distance himself from the ludicrous ‘QAnon’ version of current events – Democrats as Satanic paedophile abusers and blood-suckers, and the like. How many … Continue reading →

In the midst of two extreme national crises – Coronavirus and Brexit – we have a Prime Minister in Britain who is quite clearly not up to the job, and is almost universally despised and ridiculed on account of this. … Continue reading →

I’ve just spent a pleasant weekend literally centuries away from the gloom and corruption of our own times, preparing a talk for the Elgar Society on his early oratorio, Scenes from the Saga of King Olaf.  Not that Olaf’s times were any … Continue reading →