A review of the new sci-fi movie “Alien: Covenant”
May 31st, 2017 by Roger Darlington
“Alien” (1979) and “Aliens” (1986) were absolute classics that set the bar impossibly high for any further sequels – but the sequels keep on coming. “Alien 3” (1992) was disappointing and “Alien Resurrection” (1997) rather good. Then came “Prometheus” (2012) with the return of original director Ridley Scott. This was not as scary as the original or as exciting as the first sequel but it represented a genuine development of the narrative in its almost philosophical approach.
Now Scott (approaching 80) is back with a work, set a decade after “Prometheues”, which is not classic but certainly entertaining and moderately scary.
Visually “Convenant” is trademark Scott with wonderfully atmospheric sets. There are plenty of aliens in different forms emerging from different parts of different bodies and we are introduced to the Neomorph. And there are some good action sequences especially as the transporter is leaving the planet (actually Milford Sound in New Zealand which I have visited). A weakness is the cast: there are too many – 15 (compared to seven plus a cat first time round), mostly married couples – so that we do not get to know many of the characters sufficiently to care that much about whether they live or die.
The exceptions are Daniels (Katherine Waterston) – who has the now traditional kick-ass female role – and the two synthetics, David and Walter, both played by Michael Fassbender who rather steals the show.
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Today’s publication of the reprinted edition of my biography of the RAF’s greatest night intruder
May 30th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
The Czech Karel Kuttelwascher was the Royal Air Force’s greatest night intruder ace in World War Two. In all, he shot down 18 German aircraft – 15 bombers and 3 fighters – and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross twice in 42 days.
I wrote his biography under the title “Night Hawk” which was published in 1985. The book was printed in a Czech edition in 1993. Today a reprinted British edition comes out under the imprint of Fonthill Media.
Essentially the 2017 work is the same as the 1985 one, but there are a series of improvments:
- Small typographical mistakes or factual errors have been corrected.
- There is an additional introduction which you can read below.
- There are three additional bits of material from wartime sources.
- There are more photographs – 67 instead of 49 – and the quality of photographs is better.
You can learn more about the new edition and how to order it here.
You can learn more about Karel Kuttelwascher and “Night Hawk” here.
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Introduction To British Reprinted
Edition Of “Night Hawk”
When “Night Hawk” was published in 1985, I really thought that was the end of the story. But, over the next three decades, time and again something happened to revisit and revive the story.
Here in Britain, Karel Kuttelwascher’s name was included as one of ‘The Few’ on the Battle of Britain memorials erected at Capel-le-Ferne on the Kent coast (1993) and on the Victoria Embankment in London (2005). Television producer Peter Williams made a series called “Love And War” and one of the six programmes was devoted entirely to Kut’s wartime exploits and marriage. The programme has subsequently been rebroadcast many times.
In 2005, the Royal Air Force’s Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, based at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, England, painted its Hawker Hurricane IIC PZ865 in the colour scheme of BE581 ‘Night Reaper’. The scheme included 11 swastika kill markings under the cockpit sill on the port side (as seen in a contemporary newspaper photograph) as BE581 might have appeared the morning after Kut’s triple kill on 5 May 1942. The BBMF aircraft wore this scheme for the next few years as it performed at air displays around the country.
Meanwhile there was a ‘velvet revolution’ in Czechoslovakia which resulted in the overthrow of communism in 1989 and then a ‘velvet separation’ when the country was divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. The arrival of democracy led to a great interest in the role of Czechoslovaks who fought with the Western allies in World War Two and “Night Hawk” was published in Czech in 1993. Whereas 3,000 copies of the English edition were published, 15,000 copies of the Czech edition were printed.
The then Czechoslovak President Václav Havel posthumously promoted Karel Kuttelwascher to Brigadier General in 2000 and the current Czech President Miloš Zeman posthumously gave him the White Lion – the country’s highest award – in 2016. In Kut’s birthplace of Svatý Kříž, a large memorial was constructed.
Kut would be amazed by the interest that continues to be shown in his story some three quarters of a century after his exploits, but it is quite a story as you will now discover.
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My recent holiday in Sri Lanka – the complete narrative
May 29th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
I’ve recently returned from an enjoyable two-week holiday in Sri Lanka. On the trip, I blogged here each day on my experiences.
If you didn’t get the chance to read these blog postings or missed some or would like to read a complete account of the trip, I have now produced a full narrative here.
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Beware of my holiday destinations
May 27th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
The joke among our family and friends is that, when I choose to visit a particular part of the world for a holiday, something dramatic often happens there.
I suppose it started when I made a first visit to what was then Czechoslovakia in 1988. The following year the country overthrew Communism in its ‘velvet revolution’ which triggered other revolutions in Central & Eastern Europe.
In 2003, I made a visit to Nepal when the Maoist insurgency was still active.The day after our arrival in Kathmandu, the chief of police, his bodyguard and his wife were killed while on an early morning walk on the outskirts of the capital.
In 2008, I made a visit to Cuba. Just two weeks before our departure, Fidel Castro announced that he was stepping down as the world’s longest-serving president after an astonishing 49 years in power.
Then there was my trip to Iran in 2009. When the disputed presidential election led to massive demonstrations and brutality in June, the British Foreign Office advised against travel to Iran and we wondered whether the trip would actually go ahead. Fortunately the domestic situation became calmer and we were able to make the trip in the first week of November even though this coincided with fresh demonstrations around the 30th anniversary of the taking of the American Embassy hostages.
The saddest occurrence was the follow-up to my trip to Syria in 2011. Just a couple of weeks after our departure, demonstrations started that soon led to armed conflict and then a full-scale civil war that is still raging. As the conflict enters its seventh year, more than 465,000 Syrians have been killed in the fighting, more than a million injured and over 12 million Syrians – half the country’s prewar population – have been displaced from their homes.
Four years ago, I visited Bangkok as a break on the flight to Australia. The next year, there was a coup d’état in the country which is still ruled by a military dictatorship.
Three years ago, I made a tour of Central America, visiting Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Three of these countries have had brutal civil wars which are now thankfully over, but three have them are ravaged by violent street gangs and drug groups, with two of them having the highest murder rates in the world outside of actual war zones.
This week, I returned from a two-week holiday in Sri Lanka. All the time I was there, there was talk of the late arrival of the south-westerly monsoon which they have at this time of year. Clearly we were travelling out of season which is why our hotels were so empty and I was able to save so much money by not having to pay a single supplement.
But I have just heard the news of massive flooding from the arrival of the monsoon. At least 100 people have been killed and nearly 500,000 displaced. So sad for the wonderful people of Sri Lanka.
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For the first time in forever, I watched a movie on an aircraft
May 27th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just returned from a wonderful two-week holiday touring the beautiful island of Sri Lanka. Obviously the flight there and back were long ones but I never use the inflight entertainment, preferring to read and sleep.
As many readers will know, I’m a massive movie fan. But I like to see my films on a decent-sized screen with good sound and, on an aircraft, the screen is tiny and the sound is awful because of the engines – so I never watch movies in the air.
But my flight back from Colombo to London was a daytime journey of over 11 hours and, after doing a fair bit of reading and sleeping, I wondered whether I would break my rule and watch a movie. I reckoned that, if I could find a film that I had already seen, would like to see again, and did not have too much dialogue, I would give it a go.
So I watched “La La Land” and, as when I saw it at the cinema. I just loved it and it put a smile on my face. You can read my review of the film here.
PS 1 I’m still jet-lagged.
PS 2 I was not on British Airways (which today has a massive worldwide computer problem) but on Sri Lankan Airways.
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Holiday in Sri Lanka (14): on the way home
May 23rd, 2017 by Roger Darlington
On my last morning (Tuesday) at the Trinco Blu Hotel, I checked the news online and was horrified to learn of the suicide bombing in Manchester, the city where I grew up and where my brother still lives. Following an exchange of texts with him, I learned that four schoolmates of my niece had been at the concert but fortunately all were safe.
My Sri Lankan holiday was effectively over and it was time to go home – but this was quite a journey. First I had to travel from my hotel north of Trincomalee on the north-east coast of the country all the way over to a hotel north of Chilaw on the central west coast of the island.
Shaleen picked me up at 9 am and – seven and a half hours later – just after 4.30 pm we rolled up my hotel. Driving was five and half hours – via Anuradhapura and Puttalam – but we had two breaks of an hour each, one for coffee and the other for lunch. It was a ride of around 170 miles (275 km) but we chatted all the way on a range of subjects from movies to palindromes.
My hotel was the Anantaya Resort & Spa at Bandadeniya, just north of Chilaw, and by the ocean. It was the eighth and last hotel of the holiday. Even more so than the other hotels (except the one outside Trincomalee), I was aware that we were out of season because for a time I was literally the only person having dinner in the hotel restaurant. Fortunately, later a German mother and daughter came into the restaurant, I approached them, and they kindlly invited me to join their table for a chat.
Tomorrow I fly home and my driver has offered to take me on the way to the airport to his home to meet his wife and daughter.
It has been a amazing holiday full of different experiences and I hope that you have enjoyed reading my blog posts about the trip.
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Holiday in Sri Lanka (13): swimming with sharks
May 22nd, 2017 by Roger Darlington
The Trinco Blu Hotel outside Trincomalee is the kind of place that, once guests have checked in, they tend not to leave until they check out – but I like to explore around and seek new experiences, so this morning (Monday) I booked a trip to a place called Pigeon Island. I was the only person on the excursion, so I had to pay quite a bit more than the list price (for me it was £68) for the three hours, but it was worth it for the opportunity to go snorkelling in an accessible and beautiful location.
I have only been snorkelling once before in my life and I had doubted that I would be able to do it again since I go on cultural rather than beach holidays. My previous experience of snorkelling was four years ago at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia when I was on a vessel with around 200 other tourists but essentially left to my own resources. This was different in so many ways. It was on a small island, there was only a local guide and me in the four-seater boat, and my guide was with me at all times.
We set off at 8.30 am and, a little way off shore, my guide stopped the boat opposite a small Hindu shrine and made some sort of supplication. Gosh, I had no idea that our venture would be so potentially hazardous. It was a wet and bouncing ride of half an hour to Pigeon Island about half a mile off shore from the village of Nilaveli. The island is a national park named after the blue rock pigeons that nest there.
I changed into my swimming trunks and donned orange life jacket, lime green flippers and black snorkel. Two problems soon became apparent. First, my guide knew only a handful of words in English and pronounced them with an indecipherable accent. Second, as on my first snorkelling experience, it took me a while to breath through the snorkel without ingesting salty sea water. Later a third issue emerged and I learned an important lesson in life: when wearing flippers, you can only walk backwards and slowly (it makes you look like a dumb duck, but it works).
There are two beaches on the narrow island and the first is noted for its sea life. I saw a couple of small sharks and several turtles really close. The area was affected by coral bleaching in 2011, but the coral still looks mysterious and, when there is some colour left, absolutely glorious.
When we moved to the second beach, my guide repeatedly told me there would be “lots of piss”. Only when we were in the water did I appreciate that he meant that I would see plenty of fish. Observing at close quarters underwater fish of different sizes, shapes and colours is a truly wondrous experience. Suspended in warm water with the only sound one’s breathing is almost a mystical experience.
Since this is essentially the last day of my holiday (the rest of the time is travelling), snorkelling on Pigeon Island was the icing on the cake of a fascinating and fun holiday.
After lunch at the hotel, I had a post-prandial stroll outside the establishment but, since the temperature was 34C/93F, it had to be a short walk. The rest of the day was more writing, more reading, more swimming, more sleeping and of course more eating and drinking. Such a tough life …
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Holiday in Sri Lanka (12): around Trincomalee
May 21st, 2017 by Roger Darlington
Trincomalee is not really what I was expecting. The hotel is not in the city but at a resort and all the other guests are young couples or parents with small children, so there are no cultural options on offer. However, I read about a place nearby called Velgam Vehera and, since Shaleen had decided to stay at the same hotel rather than go home, this morning (Sunday) I paid for him to take me to this place.
The location is the remnants of a Buddhist monastery thought to have been built by King Devanampiya Tissa in the 2nd century which escaped destruction in the Chola invasion in the 10th century. As well as these ruins and a tiny modern shrine, two things attracted my attention.
First, there is a tiny museum – just one room with photographs and a video – about a local attack by the Tamil Tigers at the site in 2000 when 26 Sinhalese soldiers and civilians were killed. Second, I called into a local Buddhist Sunday School and mixed with the teachers and the children.
Back at the hotel, there was a different atmosphere today. At lunchtime a couple of dozen young local Air Force personnel – all male – on some kind of break from an intense course had a beach party, all dressed identically in jeans and Air Force T shirts and dancing to unbelievably loud music. I chatted to a group of four of them: two Sr Lankan (one Sinhalese, one Tamil), one Indian, one Bangladeshi. Their only common language was English and they were all fluent, so we got along well and exchanged contact details.
I spent the rest of the day chilling: eating, drinking, writing, reading, swimming, sleeping. It’s a tough life …
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A review of a book on the Sri Lankan civil war
May 21st, 2017 by Roger Darlington
“This Divided Island” by Samantha Subramanian (2014)
I read this book about the Sri Lankan civil war before and during a two-week trip to the island in which I ensured that I visited the Tamil part of the country as well as the more general areas populated by the majority Sinhalese. It is an unconventional book in a couple of respects.
First, it is not written by an insider or a total outsider and, though it is a work of non-fiction, the power of the writing has some of the elements of a novel. Subramanian is an Indian of Tamil ethnicity and Brahmin caste who studied journalism at Penn State University, so he has some sympathies with Tamils and speaks their language but he has the objectivity and fluency of a journalist.
Second, this is not a factual narrative of the Sri Lankan civil war, although helpfully there is a two-page timeline. Instead the structure of the work is a series of personal stories curated through interviews and travels. This approach means that the reader learns little hard fact but really feels the pain and loss of the people on either side of the conflict.
Subramanian refers to the origins of the majority Buddhist Sinhalese and the minority Hindu Tamils and argues that, though Buddhist nationalists represent the Sinhalese as the native population and portray the Tamils as foreigners, “Nobody knows with certainty whether the Sinhalese were here before the Tamils” but “Both communities have lived on the island for over twenty centuries”. He insists: “In Sri Lanka, ethnic divisions are lines drawn not in sand but in slush”.
He argues that “Through no doing of their own, Tamils found themselves unfairly advantaged” by British colonial policy which meant that Tamils were disproportionately likely to go to university, work in the civil service and learn English. Following independence, in 1956, parliament sought to correct what was seen as an historic and unfair advantage by making Sinhalese the sole official language of the country. Then, in 1972, a new constitution gave Buddhism ‘the foremost place’ among the nation’s religions.
In 1975, a Tamil called Velupillai Prabhakaran – who the next year founded the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or Tamil Tigers – assassinated the mayor of Jaffna. The beginning of the civil war is usually dated from a Tiger ambush of an army convoy in Jaffna on 23 July 1983 when 12 soldiers were killed. The government finally declared a crushing victory on 18 May 2009 and Prabhakaran himself was killed in the final day of fighting.
The 26 year long war cost up to 100,000 lives. Then, in the final bloody weeks, some 40,000 non- combatants were killed in what many have classed a war crime by the Sri Lankan army. The Tamil word for the war was ‘prachanai’ which simply translates as ‘the problem’.
Subramanian is even-handed in his acknowledgment of injustice on both sides of the conflict. He explains how the LTTE forced ever-younger boys into their army and killed those they regarded as traitors of even just critics and he writes of the Tigers showing “such an endless genius for brutality”. But he expresses horror at the excesses of the Sri Lankan army, particularly the shelling of civilians and hospitals in the final weeks, and records the multiple disappearances of former Tiger soldiers and critical journalists since the conflict ended.
He notes: “In the long war, the two sides had grown closer in temper than either would have cared to admit”.
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Holiday in Sri Lanka (11): Trincomalee
May 20th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
In the part of north-west London where I live, there are lots of Sri Lankans, all Tamils who were refugees from the bitter civil war. Indeed the local cab company I use is staffed almost exclusively by Tamils. Therefore I was determined that, whenever I visited Sri Lanka, I would see something of the Tamil part of the country in the north and east. The basic Voyages Jules Verne tour does not include anywhere in Tamil territory, so I needed to book a VJV extension, only to find that I was the only person on this extension.
So on Saturday, I said farewell to Thelma and Andrea, who went off with Rashmika westwards to Chilaw preparatory to flying home, while I travelled north east to the Tamil city of Trincomalee. My driver was Shaleen Leiton, a cheerful and chatty Singalese from Chilaw, and I sat in the front of his Toyota Allion car so that we could talk together.
Clearly Sri Lankans are devoted to their religion: Rashmika – a Buddhist – had a small Buddha figure and a small prayer wheel (powered by sunlight) on his dashboard, while Shaleen – a Roman Catholic – had a small statue of the Virgin Mary on his dashboard and two crucifixes swinging from his mirror. It was a straight road north east from Dumbulla to Trincomalee and, in contrast to the previous days of my holiday, there was virtually no traffic but some army checkpoints.
Two and a quarter hours after leaving Dumbulla, we arrived at the Trinco Blu hotel which rather took my breath away. I felt that I had died and gone to heaven – except that it is not really my kind of heaven because I am not a sea and sand man. Both the open-walled reception area plus my modern ground floor room overlook an open air swimming pool, just beyond which lies a beach of golden sand and an ocean of breathtaking blue with palm trees dotted all around.
I really had no idea what – if anything – was arranged for me during my time in Trincomalee and Shaleen did not seem much wiser. He advised me that he was supposed to show me the city so, after a quick lunch at my new hotel, I reconnected with him and we had a ‘tour’ of about an hour and a half in a temperature of 37C.
Historically known as Gokanna, Trincomalee (or Trinco as it is often called) has a natural deep-water harbour, said to be one of the finest in the world. The town suffered greatly in the civil war and it also sustained damage from the tsunami of 2004.
Really there was only one place of interest on our ‘tour’ but that was splendid: the Hindu temple of Koneswaram Kovil. Although a shrine is thought to have stood at this spot for some 2,500 years, the present temple was built in 1952. It is one of the most sacred sites in Sri Lanka dedicated to Lord Shiva and a huge blue statue of this god stands outside the brightly-coloured temple.
At the hotel, I ate dinner alone for the first time on this holiday and indeed there was only one person in the part of the establishment where I had my food, but I’m OK with my own company. After eating, I wandered down to the beach to hear the waves and observed that on the beach there are a set of four-poster couches with side lights (very romantic).
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