Archive for the ‘History’ Category
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 […]
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Will we ever agree on what caused the First World War?
August 19th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
It took six weeks, but I have now finished viewing the box set of the 26-part BBC television series on “The Great War” which was bought for me as a birthday present by a good friend. It was a utterly fascinating series, informative and balanced and very, very moving. This was a war the like of […]
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When was England last invaded? 1066 or 1688?
August 9th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
I always tell foreigners that England was last invaded in 1066 when the Normans beat the English at the Battle of Hastings. I always argue that this lack of invasion or occupation or liberation in almost a millennium explains our strange but effective political system which has evolved slowly and pragmatically over many centuries. However, […]
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The Battles of Verdun and the Somme
August 4th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
As I explained in this posting, for my recent birthday some friends gave me the box set of the groundbreaking 1964 BBC series on “The Great War”. There are 26 episodes and I have now viewed 15. The most recent episodes that I have watched cover two battles that involved casualties that were so huge as […]
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Lie and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum
July 13th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
In AD 79, the volcano at Mount Vesuvius erupted, destroying and burying the two Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Since the rediscovery of the cities in the 1700s, the cataclysmic event has had a special fascination for many around the world. I have always had a particular interest because my mother was born and […]
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My introduction to the Great War
July 3rd, 2013 by Roger Darlington
For my recent birthday, some friends gave me the box set of the groundbreaking 1964 BBC series on “The Great War”. There are 26 episodes and I have already viewed six. As I watched these pictures of the outbreak of a war that the Germans planned would last a mere 40 days, I was reminded […]
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Have many books have you read?
July 1st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Today, I started reading a long book: the near-600 page work entitled “A History Of The World” by Andrew Marr. In his Introduction, he states: “I calculate that around two thousand books, never mind pamphlets and journals, have been read for what follows.” As I have kept a diary for 50 years, I know how […]
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The 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettsburg
July 1st, 2013 by Roger Darlington
In the United States, it’s huge; elsewhere in the world, it may pass relatively unnoticed. Today is the 150th anniversary of the commencement of the three-day Battle of Gettysburg, a decisive conflict in the long and bloody American civil war. A year ago, my wife and I visited the site of the battle with close […]
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How an SS officer tried to get the Pope to condemn the Holocaust
June 29th, 2013 by Roger Darlington
Until this weekend, I had never heard of Kurt Gerstein. In the Second World War, he was a SS officer and member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS who witnessed mass murders in the Nazi extermination camps at Belzec and Treblinka. He gave information to the Swedish diplomat Göran von Otter, as well as to members of the Roman Catholic Church including contacts […]
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