Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Remembering the siege of Sarajevo
April 5th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Twenty years ago today, the siege of Sarajevo began. It was the longest siege of a capital city in the history of modern warfare lasting from from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 – a total of 1,335 days. The siege lasted three times longer than the siege of Stalingrad and a year longer than […]
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The remarkable story of Leopold Socha
March 29th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
You have never heard of him but he is commemorated by the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem (which I have visited) as “Righteous among the Nations” In the last year of Nazi occupation of Eastern Poland, he saved the lives of a group of Jews by hiding them in sewers. The story has recently been […]
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The death of a hero
March 28th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
In 1984, my first and only book was published. It was a biography of my wife’s father, the World War II Czech night intruder ace Karel Kuttelwascher and it was called “Night Hawk”. While doing picture research for the book at the Imperial War Museum, I came across a photograph of an aircraft called “The […]
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Would you risk your life for a book?
March 12th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
I have only just got round to watching my recording of a programme broadcast by BBC4 a few weeks ago about how a group of people in Sarajevo managed to save a priceless library collection during the siege of 1992-1996. The Gazi Husrav Beg Library was founded in 1537 and held over 10,000 historic works detailing […]
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Word of the day: OK
February 28th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
It’s one of there most commonly-used words in the English language – but what is the origin of OK? There are lots of incorrect explanations, but one can find the true history in the book “The Story Of English In 100 Words” [my review here]. The term first appeared in 1839 in a Boston newspaper. […]
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“Fifty Things You Need To Know About World History”
February 26th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
If you were writing a book on world history of just 400 pages and decided to select only 50 events or people or developments, what would you chose? You can see the choice of Hugh Williams here. I think that it is important to have some appreciation of the history of the world and not […]
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The day 17 Chinese came to tea
February 24th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
Our Chinese ‘son’ Zhihao makes his living by accompanying various Chinese delegations on their tours of the UK and his current delegation had a different request from others: they wanted to visit a typical British home. This is how 17 Chinese turned up at our semi-detached house today – a bit of a crush but […]
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2012 – a year of anniversaries
February 13th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
As this article on the BBC web site points out, 2012 will see all sorts of anniversaries: “2012 is set to be a bumper year for such commemorations. Between the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens and the Diamond Jubilee celebrations, yet to come are two significant but slightly ambiguous centenaries: the death […]
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Bicentenary of birth of Charles Dickens
February 5th, 2012 by Roger Darlington
The wonderful English writer Charles Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 – exactly 200 years ago this week – and died on 8 June 1870. I confess that, like too many people, I have read very little Dickens since I left school but, last summer, I did read “A Tale Of Two Cities” which […]
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Back 37 years to South Woodford
December 2nd, 2011 by Roger Darlington
This morning, I took the Central Line out all the way to South Woodford to see a colleague for a discussion. When I left the tube station, I realised that I had not been there for 37 years. I fought the two General Elections of 1974 as the Labour candidate for the then constituency of Wanstead […]
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