Monthly Archives: November 2020

It is  beginning to look a bit like the ‘End of Days’, isn’t it? – if not for humanity generally – though you never know: Covid-19 might turn out to be the agent of the next ‘Great Extinction’ – then for the … Continue reading →

Just now putting the final touches to my Elgar Society talk for Saturday; broadcast from our island off the Swedish coast. I’m nervous on many levels: historical (the Vikings are not really ‘my period’); musical (I’m no musician); but mostly … Continue reading →

Sad to learn of Jan Morris’s death, although she was a great age. She was probably the greatest of all travel writers. I never met her, but we corresponded when she and I were both writing books about the British … Continue reading →

Fascinating article here on Trump’s anti-science ‘cult’ and its responsibility for the spread of Coronavirus in the USA. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/178317

It’s not getting any better, is it? Both Britain and Sweden seem to be experiencing ‘peaks’ in the virus just now, with only flickering hopes of a vaccine in several months at the earliest. The Swedish statsminister, Stefan Löfven, is scheduled to … Continue reading →

Boris Johnson’s announcement yesterday of a £16.5 billion increase in defence funding has surprised and shocked many people, especially at the height of a national health crisis in which there would seem on the surface to be rather more deserving … Continue reading →

I’ve always considered caviar to be almost the quintessential upper-class delicacy: enormously expensive, the best sort coming from sturgeons that only swim in the Black Sea, and bought in little round jars labelled in Cyrillic letters. For some reason it … Continue reading →

I finally resigned from the Labour Party last week, after being warned that I was in danger of being disciplined for ‘anti-semitism’ on the basis of a blog I wrote some time ago arguing that the problem of anti-semitism in … Continue reading →

For four years now I’ve regarded Trump as the perfect personification of the country he’s been leading into its end-capitalist stage. The greed, the amorality, the boasting, the lack of regard for human life and welfare by the side of … Continue reading →

Well, what a relief! We celebrated last night with a bottle of champagne. It wasn’t quite the delirious occasion that Obama’s first victory was (I was in Kentucky then); but that turned out to be a little disappointing in the … Continue reading →