Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Celebrating Czech National Day
October 28th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
It’s probably escaped your attention but today is Czech National Day, the anniversary of the date in 1918 when the new state of Czechoslovakia was declared. My wife Vee is half Czech, so we follow these things. Vee’s father was a famous World War Two pilot, so were were invited to attend the National Day […]
Posted in History, World current affairs | Comments (0)
Blog Action Day – and our viewing of the play “Chimerica”
October 16th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Around the globe, today is Blog Action Day and this year’s theme is human rights. Coincidentally this afternoon, my wife and I made a too rare visit to the theatre in central London. We went to see an amazing play called “Chimerica” written by Lucy Kirkwood (who has never actually been to China). It is all about […]
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
Ruminations on Romania (1): recent history
October 8th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
In 1861, the United Romanian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia was created. At the National History Museum, we saw a special exhibition to mark the centenary of the peace of Bucharest in 1913. Apparently this treaty ended the Second Balkan War. The First Balkan War of 1912-13 involved the Balkan League of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro […]
Posted in History, My life & thoughts | Comments (0)
Reviews of two films about the rape of Nanjing
October 1st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I have previously viewed “City Of Life And Death”, a film about the Japanese occupation of Nanjing in 1936-37, and I reviewed it here. I have just seen another, more recent, film set in the same time and place. It is titled “The Flowers Of War” and I have reviewed it here.
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
75th anniversary of the infamous Munich Agreement
September 30th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I first became fully aware of the travesty of the 1938 Munich Agreement – whose 75th anniversary is today – when, in the early 1980s, I was researching the life of the Czechoslovak RAF pilot Karel Kuttelwascher. He was my wife’s father and my biography of him was published under the title of “Night Hawk” in […]
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Is this the least violent period in the history of humankind?
September 8th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Most people are convinced that we live in violent times – perhaps the most violent times. But it ain’t necessarily so. I was visiting friends yesterday and, on the kitchen table, was the book “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined” by Canadian psychologist Stephen Pinker. Now I am never going to read […]
Posted in History, Social policy | Comments (0)
How long a book does it take to tell the history of the world?
September 4th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I am a great believer that one cannot understand current affairs without having a knowledge of history and that we all need not just an appreciation of our own country’s history but at least a general overview of world history. But obviously world history is a huge subject and we are all busy people, so […]
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Why is a minute divided into 60 seconds, an hour into 60 minutes, yet there are only 24 hours in a day?
August 28th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
All is revealed in this short but informative essay.
Posted in History, Miscellaneous | Comments (0)
The “I have a dream” speech – the actual text
August 28th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Fifty years ago today, Martin Luther King made his famous “I have a dream” speech in Washington DC. You can read the full text here. You can see a 17 minute video of the march here:
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Who was the most destructive man of the early 20th century?
August 22nd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I have spent recent weeks ploughing through the 600-page “A History Of The World” by Andrew Marr and I’ve now reached the early part of the 20th century. He suggests that “the most destructive man of his generation” is someone you’ve never heard of: a German bureaucrat called Arthur Zimmerman. Marr writes: “He was responsible […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)