Archive for the ‘History’ Category
The siege of Leningrad
October 28th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
I’m reading a really good novel called “City Of Thieves” which is set in Leningrad in January 1942 at the time of the prolonged siege of the Russian city by the Germans. Doing a bit of background checking, I found out something I never knew: the Finnish were also involved in the siege in support […]
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First World War finally over
October 3rd, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Of course, in military terms the First World War – or the Great War, as it was known at the time – concluded on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. But financially it only ended today in a sense with the payment of the final interest on loans […]
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Why did the “Titantic” sink?
September 25th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
I was 10 years old when the film “A Night To Remember” – about the sinking of the “Titantic” – was released in 1958. In a lifetime passion for movies, this was one of the first that I remember seeing and made an indelible impression on my young mind. Indeed, when many decades later I […]
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My wife the media star
September 19th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
My wife Vee, together with her twin sister Mari, has been away in the Czech Republic for the last week attending various events to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, a conflict in which their father the Czech Karel Kuttelwascher was a participant with the RAF’s No 1 Squadron. There’s a report […]
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Can we have the Cyrus cylinder back?
September 19th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
OK, so what is this cylinder and who are ‘we’? The Cyrus cylinder is a 6th century BC artefect from Babylonia that is sometimes described as the world’s first charter of human rights. Since its excavation in 1879, it has been owned and displayed by the British Museum in London. Currently, however, the cylinder is […]
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The Battle of Britain (5): the turning point
September 15th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
If there is one day that is seen to have been decisive in the Battle of Britain, it was 15 September 1940 – 70 years ago today – and, since the war, it has been celebrated as Battle of Britain Day. Although in reality Royal Air Force claims were three times the actual number of […]
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How many millions did Mao kill?
September 10th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Everyone knows that, in the 20th century, the greatest killers were Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin whose policies were responsible for millions and millions of lives. But many people forget about the Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung. In “Mao: The Unknown Story” by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday [my review here], his appalling record was examined […]
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The American War of Independence
September 8th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
I’m currently watching the British broadcasting of the series “America: The Story of the US” (titled in the United States “America: The Story Of Us”. It’s heavy on special effects and contemporary figures, but it is very informative and highly watchable. Episode 2 – “Revolution” – deals with the American War of Independence. Inevitably the […]
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Did you know that there was a Book of Roger?
August 27th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Almost three years ago now, I did a blog posting about King Roger II of Sicily (1095-1154) and speculated that I might have been named after him because my mother came from Naples which was part of Roger’s kingdom. I’ve recently been watching a BBC2 television series on “The Normans” which included the fascinating information […]
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America’s Bonus Army
August 25th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
I enjoyed enormously “The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver [my review here]. Now I am reading her new novel “The Lacuna”. It is full of historic references and I’m not familiar with all of them, so I’m constantly checking things out of the web. For instance, I knew nothing at all about the Bonus Army […]
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