Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Swedish media is full of Boris today. (I’m back there now.) Most of the reportage is pretty accurate, and less opinionated than ours. Dagens Nyheter’s London correspondent claims that Johnson’s right-wing nationalism has less in common with Continental and … Continue reading →

It looked so unlikely to rational-minded commentators a few months ago as to make one wonder whether the entire historical process might, in fact, be governed by mere irrational chance. That, of course, would be anathema to most academic historians, … Continue reading →

Whether Islam has obstructed ‘modernity’ is a question worth asking, and not to be immediately condemned as ‘Islamophobic’, as Boris Johnson’s raising of it in an old book of his has been (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-islam-muslim-comments-democracy-tory-leadership-contest-a9006211.html). I’m pretty sure that Boris is an Islamophobe, … Continue reading →

From the Berlioz Museum in Cote Saint Andre.

Yes, it was exciting, wasn’t it; but not really ‘cricket’. The method of deciding a winner after a tie was farcical. Why do you have to have a single ‘winner’ when both teams have performed equally well? It reminds me … Continue reading →

Just back from our trip to France. Theme: French revolutionary Art 1780-1848. (Pretentious – moi?) High points: the Berlioz Museum in Cote St-Andre and the French Revolutionary Museum in Vizille. Both terrific, as were the small Clochemerle-like towns they were … Continue reading →

Jeremy Hunt’s latest wheeze, in his bid to become Britain’s new Prime Minister, is to refund university tuition fees for students who go on to become ‘entrepreneurs’. In fact he’s also making a big thing of his own early career … Continue reading →

Before I go: I recently came across an article on the web – I’ve lost it now, but that doesn’t matter – about Hanslope Park, an ultra-secret archive in the depth of the Buckinghamshire countryside, where the British government used … Continue reading →

Just to say that I’ll be on my hols shortly – in SE France, to visit La Cote Saint-André (birthplace of my favourite composer), and one or two other places. Grenoble has a Musée de la Revolution, which Kajsa is … Continue reading →

On the plus side of my ‘good and bad effects of the British Empire list’, I always used to put the spread of cricket. (Sometimes it was there alone.) It must have been the Empire that spread cricket, unlike football, … Continue reading →