I’ve been thinking about 1982... down Memory Lane, along a tortuous, circuitous, cul-de-sac, but such is the way my mind seems to work. Bruce Taylor has written a biography of my former Spanish professor, Sir Peter Russell, who died in 2006. I’ve just reviewed it for the The Queen’s College website. Sir Peter, his pupil…
Unlike Hungary, Croatia is a country we had already visited: in 2013 to the Istrian peninsula (Pula, Rovinj, Montovun, Beram, Poreč etc.), and in 1989, before the start of the Yugoslav Wars, to Dalmatia (Dubrovnik, Korčula and Split). Of course a sizeable chunk of Croatia's population has no memory of life in "Yugoslavia". Another thing…
"I am a proud Lancastrian. I hate London", said Madam X recently to a friend of mine. It is the kind of remark you could write a book about, if you were so inclined. What, if any, is the connection between the two statements? Apart from the obvious, what does it signify? If addressed to…
The discovery of Herne Hill has been reported in the press. Again. It happens, on average, once a decade. Yet, like America, it was always in plain sight. Of course, Columbus, to his dying day, believed he’d sailed to the Far East, and in any case he spent almost all his time exploring the so-called…
I had visited to Athens twice before: once in 1971, when I was 16, and once with my wife Anne, in 2000. Only for a couple of days in each case; all I can really remember is traipsing up to the Acropolis and visiting two or three museums. This year we decided to spend four…
It is easy to forget that 40 years ago our country (my country, that is) was at war. Very easy for someone of my generation to forget that it happened four decades ago. And even easier for subsequent generations, because there has been little about it in the news. For youngsters who were not even…
The BBC reminds us that the UK's first lockdown began a year ago today. At that point 364 people had died; now the total has reached 126,172. Over half the adult population has been vaccinated: an incredible achievement, many times better than what any other European country has achieved, and yet life has not returned…
Having lived in Wirral and Oxford until I was 22, I'd rarely travelled on the Tube until I started working in Upminster. Even then, I travelled mostly by bus or I walked. It took me a while to work out where the lines were connected, how to avoid the interchanges with the longest walks, and…
We finally made our way out of London on Bank Holiday Monday (how can you tell during a lockdown?) and drove south for an hour or so into Kent past Churchill's house, Chartwell. It was the first time either of us had ventured more than four miles from home for 10 weeks. It felt odd…
How are you coping? If you feel you are coping, that is? As I noted to a friend, I veer between manic activity and shameful indolence on a daily basis. At first, upon seeing my wife spend all day seated at the dining room table in one videoconference after another, I experienced a bout of…
The Wight Stuff 