Archive for August, 2022
How would you like to die?
August 11th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
It was just over 50 years ago but I still remember it. I was in my early 20s and very active politically in the Labour Party. I had represented my Constituency Labour Party at the Labour Party Annual Conference and I went round all the wards giving my report of the event. This particular meeting […]
Posted in My life & thoughts | Comments (6)
A review of “The Good Shepherd (currently showing on Netflix)
August 10th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This 2006 movie is something of a cinematic curiosity since it has so much talent on both sides of the camera and yet the outcome is so disappointing. It purports to tell the story of the formation by the United States of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War and its […]
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A review of the new action movie “Bullet Train”
August 9th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I once took a bullet train from Tokyo to Kyoto but it was nothing like this crazy movie which looks like something that British director Guy Ritchie and American director Quentin Tarantino might have made if ever they teamed up for a joint production. In fact, the director is David Leitch whose last work was […]
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How strong is China’s claim to Taiwan? And what about Mongolia?
August 6th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the island around 6,000 years ago. In the 17th century, large-scale Han Chinese immigration to western Taiwan began under a Dutch colony and continued under the Kingdom of Tungning. The island was annexed in 1683 by the Qing dynasty of […]
Posted in History, World current affairs | Comments (2)
Word of the day: exeat
August 5th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
This word actually came up in a conversation over coffee that I had this week. It was totally new to me. Exeat means official permission for a student to be absent from a college or university. It is the third person singular present subjunctive of the Latin verb expire which means to go out. So […]
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A review of the new film “Thirteen Lives”
August 4th, 2022 by Roger Darlington
In June 2018 in northern Thailand, the young boys of the Wild Boars junior football team aged 11-16 and their coach went missing in the local caves of Tham Luang. We all remember how -18 days later – they were eventually saved, but the story still seems almost literally incredible. In this film version of […]
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A review of the novel “Beautiful World, Where Are You” by Sally Rooney
August 3rd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I really enjoyed Rooney’s first two novels “Conversations With Friends” and “Normal People”, both of which have now been turned into a 12-episode television series, so I was keen to read this third work and it does not disappoint. As with her earlier works, the focus is on friendships and relationships between young people in […]
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Another match is lit in the tinder-dry Balkans
August 2nd, 2022 by Roger Darlington
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It is something of a joke among my family and friends that, when I visit a country, shortly afterwards there is some sort of catastrophe or crisis. You can see what I mean from this blog posting. Now, it’s only a couple of months ago that […]
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)