Archive for the ‘History’ Category
The Arab Spring (1): why was it called that?
June 6th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
This weekend, I attended the first a number of short courses that I will be attending this summer at the City Literary Institute in central London. The title was “The Arab Spring” and the lecturer was Dr James Chiriyankandath of the School of Advanced Study in the University of London. It was a comprehensive day […]
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Visit to Sark (7): the speech by Graham Robinson
June 2nd, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve done a series of posts about my weekend on the Channel Island of Sark in order to attend the launch of a book by Eric Lee. The work is called “Operation Basalt: The British Raid On Sark And Hitler’s Commando Order” and I’ve reviewed it here. At the launch […]
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Visit to Sark (6): the video from James Edgar
June 1st, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Regular readers of NightHawk will know that I recently spent a weekend on the Channel Island of Sark in order to attend the launch of a book by my good friend Eric Lee. The work is called “Operation Basalt: The British Raid On Sark And Hitler’s Commando Order” and I’ve reviewed it here. We had a […]
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A review of a new book on the Kurds and Kurdistan
May 31st, 2016 by Roger Darlington
The Middle East is perhaps the most turbulent and complicated region in the world in terms of the conflicts and parties involved. A recently-published book, entitled “The Kurdish Spring: A New Map Of The Middle East”, looks at events since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, examining the history of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran from […]
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Why a visit to Hiroshima is more complicated than you might think
May 28th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
This week, Barack Obama became the first serving American President to visit Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bomb to be dropped on a city on 6 August 1945 – a weapon used, of course, by the Americans. A lot of the media coverage mentioned that Obama did not apologise for the bombing, but […]
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Visit to Sark (5): the speech by Eric Lee
May 25th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Regular readers of NightHawk will know that I spent last weekend on the Channel Island of Sark in order to attend the launch of a book by my good friend Eric Lee. The work is called “Operation Basalt: The British Raid On Sark And Hitler’s Commando Order” and I’ve reviewed it here. As I reported in […]
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Word of the day: Holodomor
May 2nd, 2016 by Roger Darlington
I came across this word very early in the film “Child 44” which I have recently viewed [my review here]. Holodomor is a composte of two Ukrainian words and means ‘extermination by hunger’. It is a reference to the man-made famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1932 and 1933 that killed somewhere between […]
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A review of a new book on a 1942 commando raid on Sark
April 28th, 2016 by Roger Darlington
“Operation Basalt: The British Raid On Sark And Hitler’s Commando Order” by Eric Lee is a meticulously researched and excitingly written work about a small commando raid which had large and criminal consequences. You can read my review here.
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Highlights of Mexico (2): Mexican history
March 22nd, 2016 by Roger Darlington
Pre-Columbian Mexico was home to many advanced Mesoamerican civilisations, such as the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya and Aztec before first contact with Europeans. While researchers do not agree which Mesoamerican culture first domesticated the cacao tree which gave us the wonders of chocolate, the use of the fermented bean in a drink seems to […]
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Things I learned on my latest visit to the British Museum (3): the location of the Parthenon sculptures
March 3rd, 2016 by Roger Darlington
This week, I visited the British Museum with a family of Czech friends. Of course, I’ve been to the museum on many occasions but, on each such visit, I always learn something new. The majority of the surviving sculptures of the Parthenon are roughly equally divided between the British Museum in London and the Acropolis […]
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