Archive for September, 2026


Our four islands holiday (1): introduction

September 30th, 2026 by Roger Darlington

Tess and I are off on our fifth foreign trip in the two years that we’ve been an item. After two breaks in European cities and two holidays in African countries, we’re venturing forth to south-east Asia where we will visited four islands: Singapore and the three Indonesian islands of Java, Bali and Lombok.  We […]

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The latest five-star review of my book”Everyone Has A Story” available on Amazon

September 25th, 2026 by Roger Darlington

In the phrase usually attributed to the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, while we must live our lives forwards, we can only truly understand them looking backwards. I suspect it’s equally true that we can only make the connections that improve that level of understanding of our own selves when we look at the lives lived […]

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A review of the important new French film “De Gaulle: Liberté”

September 25th, 2026 by Roger Darlington

The second part of this bio-pic of General Charles de Gaulle is just as accomplished and successful as the first part “De Gaulle: Résistance”. This is hardly surprising since the two sections were shot at the same time with the same cast and crew. Again a two-year period is covered, this time 1943-1944, and again […]

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Ever heard of UK Biobank?

September 11th, 2026 by Roger Darlington

UK Biobank is the world’s most detailed study for tracking the long-term health of people as they age. The combination of four aspects sets this dataset apart from other similar initiatives. I joined Biobank in May 2010. On that occasion, I went to a testing centre in Hounslow where I had two hours of questionnaires […]

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A review of the classic film”How Green Was My Valley” (1941)

September 8th, 2026 by Roger Darlington

We remember John Ford primarily as a director of westerns (think “Stagecoach” and “The Searchers”), but he had a social conscience (“The Grapes Of Wrath”) and a Celtic sensibility (“The Quiet Man”). In this work, centred on a mythical mining village in South Wales in the late Victorian era, he explores the dirt and danger […]

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A review of an important new French film “De Gaulle: Résistance”

September 7th, 2026 by Roger Darlington

General Charles de Gaulle was the most famous and consequential military and political French figure of modern times and it is appropriate that a bio-pic of his activities in the Second World War should be the most expensive production in French cinematic history. The film was directed by Antonin Baudry, co-written with Bérénice Vila, and […]

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A review of the book “In The Streets Of Tehran” by Nila (2023)

September 2nd, 2026 by Roger Darlington

This short book (around 100 pages) by Nila, a pseudonym of a female writer and activist based in Tehran, is a heart-breaking read – both because of the descriptions of the repression shown towards the Woman/Life/Freedom protest movement of 2022-23 and because of the knowledge now (2026) of how that female-led movement, the latest in […]

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