Author Archives: bernardporter2013

Of course I have no informed opinion about when to shut down the Lockdown, or any of the other matters surrounding the Coronavirus pandemic. I’m the last person to ask about matters of the body, for years having confused my … Continue reading →

I have no memory of VE Day, though I was four and bit years old at the time. (The ‘and a bit’ is of course important at that age.) I do remember some things about the War years themselves, including … Continue reading →

If Boris Johnson thinks that Churchill’s main contribution to Britain’s War effort was to keep people’s spirits up, then I go along with him. Churchill was not a great military strategist (viz. Gallipoli, and a string of hair-brained ideas during … Continue reading →

What is going to come out of all this? First, obviously, a thorough enquiry into the UK Government’s handling of the Coronavirus crisis, which ought to make it unelectable for many more years – but probably won’t. We’ve seen recently … Continue reading →

In case anyone’s interested, here’s the original version of my review of Khalidi’s book on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which will appear shortly – slightly edited – in Jacobin. Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. A History of Settler … Continue reading →

As if coronavirus weren’t enough to worry about. (Especially for us oldies, who are so much more vulnerable to it. I’m half-expecting to be struck down at any moment; and even if not, my generation looks like having to endure … Continue reading →

Yesterday I cast a slight doubt – and I thought at the time a possibly unworthy one – on Boris’s claim to have come though a potentially fatal episode of the Coronavirus last week. It appears that I’m not the … Continue reading →

It’s difficult to plot Boris Johnson’s trajectory from now on. After a week dicing with death, as he likes to put it: ‘it could have gone either way’ – I’m sorry to introduce a note of doubt there, but we … Continue reading →

I feel better prepared for the present situation than most. That’s due to my long guilty obsession with Science Fiction, and in particular 1950s SF and disaster movies. Our current situation continually reminds me of the opening scenes of many … Continue reading →

Maybe it wasn’t such a bad election to have lost after all. Just think what the Tory press would have made of all this state dirigisme if it had been ordered by that commie Jeremy Corbyn, instead of by the cuddly … Continue reading →