Archive for the ‘History’ Category
How did Britain’s two-party system come about?
November 7th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I’m doing a six-week evening class at London’s City Literary Institute entitled: “The Making Of The United Kingdom 1603-1801: Restoration, Revolution, and Political Unions”. This week’s session – the second – was all about the reign of King Charles II, a period which saw the emergence of the two-party system of politics in Britain. The […]
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Did you know that the Italians bombed Britain in the Second World War?
November 3rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I didn’t – even though I know a fair bit about World War Two and my mother was Italian. Check out this short video:
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Why the English civil war is a misnomer
November 1st, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This week, I started a new six-week evening class at London’s City Literary Institute. The course – deliver by Dr Jamie McDougall – is entitled: “The Making Of The United Kingdom 1603-1801: Restoration, Revolution, and Political Unions”. I thought it would be a good time to understand how the UK was created when we are […]
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A review of the important new film “Official Secrets”
October 29th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
In 2003, 28 year old China-watcher Katherine Gun worked for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) when she came across evidence that the British and the Americans were covertly monitoring members of the UN Security Council in an effort to obtain leverage on countries that might be persuaded to support a crucial second vote authorising the invasion […]
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How did America come to be called America?
October 15th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
This is an interesting letter in the “Guardian” newspaper: I fear Thomas Eaton (Weekend Quiz, 12 October) is giving further credence to “fake news” from 1507, when a German cartographer was seeking the derivation of “America” and hit upon the name of Amerigo Vespucci, an obscure Florentine navigator. Derived from this single source, this made-up […]
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Remembering Gandhi 150 years after his birth
October 2nd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 and this 150th anniversary will be celebrated around the world today. I recall seeing the 1982 film “Gandhi” and this is my review of that work: “When I first saw this classic film at the cinema, the audience applauded at both the intermission and the end […]
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Have you ever been to Tiananmen Square?
September 30th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
I have been to China four times and, on each occasion, I have visited Tiananmen Square in the heart of the capital Beijing. Inevitably, each time I have recalled the massacre of June 1989. In my account of the first visit in 2000, I wrote: “One advantage of seeing the palace [the Forbidden City] from […]
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‘1944: Should we bomb Auschwitz?’ – BBC2 at 9pm
September 19th, 2019 by Roger Darlington
In April 1944, two Jewish prisoners miraculously escaped from Auschwitz. When they recounted what they had left behind, their harrowing testimony revealed the true horror of the Holocaust to the outside world for the first time. They described in forensic detail the gas chambers and the full extent of the extermination programme. The news they […]
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Today is International Slavery Day …
August 23rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
… or, to give it the full official name, International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. For over 400 years, more than 15 million men, women and children were the victims of the tragic trans-Atlantic slave trade, one of the darkest chapters in human history. 23 August of each year […]
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Why does Iran hate Britain?
July 23rd, 2019 by Roger Darlington
They blame us (and the Russians) for the Persian famine of 1917-1919 when some two million (out of a population of 10M) died. Britain and Russia occupied the country at the time. More information here. They remember that we (and the Americans) emgineered a coup in 1953. This overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad […]
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