Archive for June, 2017
Remembering the Labour MP, wife and mother Jo Cox
June 16th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
One year ago today, the 41-year-old Labour member of Parliament Jo Cox was shot and stabbed in Birstall, in her Yorkshire constituency of Batley and Spen. To mark the first anniversary of her death, her family and friends have urged people to hold events that celebrate her life. The Great Get Together, involving picnics, street parties […]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
Do you understand the British political system?
June 15th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
I’ve just been checking the traffic data for my web site which I do from time to time. I noticed a big spike in visitors the day after the General Election. Whereas I normally have around 4,000 visits a day, on 9 June visits peaked at around 5,200. The data suggests that the peak was […]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “My Cousin Rachel”
June 13th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
At an age (late 40s) when sadly many actresses start to find it tougher to obtain decent roles, Rachel Weisz is really coming into her own with central roles in films like “Denial” and now “My Cousin Rachel”. Based on the 1951 novel by English writer Daphne du Maurier (previously filmed in 1952) and both […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
MailOnline gives publicity to my book “Night Hawk”
June 12th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
I recently did a blog posting about the reprint of my book “Night Hawk” – a biography of Karel Kuttelwascher, the RAF’s greatest night intruder pilot of the Second World War. The book is now starting to receive reviews and the MailOnline web site -the most visited English-language newspaper website in the world – has […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)
How old is humankind and where did it start?
June 10th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
Until recently, the answers to these questions were that humans evolved around 200,000 years ago and originated in East Africa. As this article explains: “Scientists have long looked to East Africa as the birthplace of modern humans. Until the latest findings from Jebel Irhoud, the oldest known remnants of our species were found at Omo […]
Posted in History | Comments (0)
The British General Election – some personal reflections
June 9th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (13)
A review of the new super-hero movie “Wonder Woman”
June 7th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
This is a refreshingly different super-hero movie: one with a female central character (Diana Prince – the name Wonder Woman is never used in the film – played by the tall and beautiful Israeli martial artist, model and actress Gal Gadot) and a female director (Patty Jenkins who previously gave us “Monster”, another work with […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
The 35 words you’re (probably) getting wrong
June 6th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
I think that English is an easy language to pick up quickly at the basic level – no declension of nouns, minimal conjugation of verbs, a fairly forgiving approach to word order. But’s it’s a tough language to speak well – a massive vocabulary with lots of words that seem similar or the same, inconsistent […]
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
What is the Qatar spat all about? And why have there been so many foiled and successful terrorists incidents in the UK recently?
June 6th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
In a perceptive article in today’s “Guardian” newspaper, Paul Mason examines “Britain’s game of thrones in the Gulf”. On the clash between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, he agues: “The issue torturing the Saudi monarchy is Iran. Obama made peace with Iran in 2015, in the face of Saudi and Israeli opposition. Qatar is diplomatically closer […]
Posted in American current affairs, British current affairs | Comments (0)
Is political opposition in Parliament dead?
June 5th, 2017 by Roger Darlington
This was the title of a Drive Time programme recently featured on a radio station called Voice of Islam and I was invited to contribute to the item. The programme was billed as follows: “We spoke about the role of the opposition in Parliament and whether it was as effective as it could be. The […]
Posted in British current affairs | Comments (0)