Archive for the ‘History’ Category
Holocaust Memorial Day
January 27th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
In the UK, today is Holocaust Memorial Day. I have visited Holocaust museums in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Washington and Jerusalem and I have been to Terezin in the Czech Republic and Auschwitz and Birkenau in Poland. One weekend, I attend a fascinating course on the Holocaust run by an impressive teacher called Ronnie Landau [my […]
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The death of Jan Palach
January 19th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
My late father-in-law was a Czech night fighter pilot in the Second World War known in the media at the time as the ‘Night Hawk’. That explains the title of this blog and why I’m interested in all things Czech. So I want to point out that today is the 40th anniversary of the death […]
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Would you like to have lived in the Middle Ages?
January 17th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
Not me – if I had any doubts, they would have been utterly dispelled by my reading of “Medieval Britain: A Very Short Introduction” [my review here]. It was a time of terrible social and personal turmoil: regular civil wars, endless conflicts with France; famine, disease and plague, domination of the Church, a preoccupation with […]
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Remembering the Black Death
January 12th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
I’ve been reading a book entitled “Medieval Britain: A Very Short Introduction”. The most dramatic event of this period was the arrival in England in 1348 of what later historians called the Black Death (at the time, it was known as “the great mortality”). At a stroke, the Black Death reduced the population of England […]
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When were the Middle Ages?
January 7th, 2009 by Roger Darlington
According to the essay on Wikipedia: “The Middle Ages are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christianity in the […]
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“Guns, Germs And Steel”
December 22nd, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just started watching the television series “Guns, Germs And Steel”. In fact, this series was first broadcast in 2005 and it is based on a book published in 1998. The presenter of the series and the author of the book is American academic Jared Diamond. Jarrod seeks to explain the whole history of civilisation […]
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The end of the Red Army Faction
December 20th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
This week, I’ve seen the impressive German film “The Baader-Meinhof Complex” [my review here]. This week too has seen the release of a notorious member of the group called Christian Klar after 26 years in prison. The Red Army Faction or RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion in German) – in its early stages commonly known as […]
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Could the Second World War have ended sooner?
December 18th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just finished watching the excellent television series “World War Two: Behind Closed Doors”. This series has explored the relationships between Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, using new information from Russian records and interviewees. Stalin is confirmed as a brutal and manipulative mass killer. However, his paranoia was fuelled by his belief that […]
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Ever heard of Aleksandr Yakovlev?
November 11th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
No, neither had I until recently – but, perhaps second only to Mikhail Gorbachev, he was the man behind perestroika and glasnost. Many people in today’s Russia revile him as the man who brought down the Soviet Empire. As Russia becomes increasingly autocratic and seeks to become a resurgent world power, perhaps we should remember […]
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America’s 2nd president
November 9th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Most people around the world are familiar with America’s first president (George Washington) and third (Thomas Jefferson), but many have not heard of the second. He was John Adams who served two terms as Washington’s Vice-President before himself becoming President for a single term (1797-1801). Later his son John Quincy Adams also became (the sixth) […]
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