NightHawk

This evening, I watched a recorded version of the Channel 4 docu-drama on the life of Labour Minister Mo Mowlam which was screened yesterday evening. I thought that it was an impressive work that both captured the essence of this wonderful character and challenged us to think of how illness can define us. I am a huge fan of Julie Walters who played Mo. She caught Mo's manner of speaking very well and, as the narrative developed, looked more and more like Mo.

I met Mo Mowlam several times and loved her irreverence and eccentricity. The last time I saw her was on 26 January 2000 when I was part of a team from the Communication Workers Union meeting her in the Cabinet Office. The subject was e-citizenship and it was my job to make a PowerPoint presentation on behalf of the union.

She was amazing. First she was 45 minutes late. When she did arrive, she was warm and engaging but not exactly engaged. The conduct of the meeting was chaotic and she was constantly telling her civil servants to set up a meeting on various issues which arose.

I wrote in my diary: "Mo was very casual and enthusiastic but wanted lots of meetings and I suspect that she is the despair of conventional officials."

Of course, what none of us knew then was that she was suffering from a malignant and incurable tumour which almost certainly explains much of her erratic behaviour.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day - the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army in 1945. I have been to Auschwitz and this evening I attended a commemorative event in Harrow movingly addressed by a survivor who was in several camps including Auschwitz, 86 year old Gena Turgel. Her testimony began with her incarceration in the Krakow ghetto and ended with her marriage to a British sergeant who was part of the forces liberating Belsen.

In this short video, she talks of some of her family losses:

A fuller account of her incredible story can be read here

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There were two infamous massacres in 1937, one in the West, one in the East: the bombing by the Luftwaffe of Guernica in Spain [more information here] and the rampage by the Japanese in Nanjing in China [more information here].

The death toll in both events is disputed. At the time, the Basque government reported that 1,654 people were killed in the bombing of Guernica, but modern research suggests between 200 to 400 civilians died. The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimates that there were 260,000 casualties at Nanjing; China's official estimate is 300,000 casualties; Japanese historians estimate a lower death toll, in the vicinity of 100,000–200,000.

Now everyone in the West has heard of Guernica: it was seen as a foretaste of the total war unleashed by the Nazis on the rest of Europe a couple of years later and Picasso produced a famous painting on the incident. But I am surprised how few people in the West have heard of the massacre in Nanjing, even though the death toll was around 650 times higher.

This thought occurred to me as this week as I finished a novel with the title "Guernica" [my review here]. I have never been to Guernica but I have visited Nanjing [my account here].

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's something more than faintly ironic about the argument between a democratic state like Britain and an authoritarian nation like Iran over an artefact that some claim is the first proclamation of human rights in history. I refer to the British Museum object known as the Cyrus cylinder and you can read about the dispute in this article.

Now I was in Iran a few months ago and, while I was there, I saw the tomb of Cyrus the Great at Parsagadae and heard a local guide at Persepolis claim that his statement was the first charter of human rights. You can read my account of the trip here.

The holiday inspired me to write a short story which mentions the Cyrus cylinder. It is entitled "The Man From Iran" and you can read it here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The web site Anwers.com today carries this interesting information:

"Nearly every day of the year, somewhere on earth, an earthquake occurs. Most happen in unpopulated areas, or are so mild that they go unnoticed by the general public. But, there are about 18 major earthquakes a year, with those of the strongest intensity occurring about once annually.

Recorded history's most devastating earthquake occurred on this date in 1556 in Shaanxi, China. Estimated to be between 8.0 and 8.3 on the Richter scale, the earthquake leveled 98 counties and eight provinces of Central China. The destruction spanned an area of 500 miles, and some 830,000 lives were lost. In modern times, the most destructive earthquake took place in Tangshan, China, in 1976. The entire city was devastated and some 250,000 were killed.

The number of victims in Haiti's earthquake have yet to be tallied, but some have them as high as 200,000."

Posted by Roger Darlington at 04:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here in the UK, in one week's time, it will be Holocaust Memorial Day. You can light a virtual candle candle and access information materials here.

Of course, the Holocaust is a huge and complex subject but I found this book really informative and insightful.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Among the many interesting facts I read in the Christopher Potter book "You Are Here" [my review here] - which I've just finished - is that, during the Permian period of around 250 million years ago, up to 96% of all species then on earth was destroyed - possibly as a result of a meteor. You can read more about this astonishing period - known as The Great Dying - here.

If things had been just a little worse, you wouldn't be here to read this. Doesn't that provide a cheerful start to the year?

Posted by Roger Darlington at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Two of my many interests are aviation and history, so I was drawn to a recent television programme about an aircraft developed in Nazi German called the Horten 229. This 'bat wing' aircraft utilised amazingly advanced design and technology which effectively made it the world's first stealth aircraft. As the war was ending, American troops found an example of the Horten 229 and it was shipped back to the United States where it remains hidden from the public.

But, for this National Geographic programme, specialist staff at the Northrop-Grumman Corporation were given access to the German airframe and constructed a full-scale replica which was then tested with the radar technologies used by the RAF in the war. The Horten 229 was found to have only 40% of the radar signature of the Messerschmitt 109 which, together with its much greater speed, would have given the RAF no time to scramble fighters against it.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I spent a few hours today at the British Museum in central London. I wanted to see two things.

The first was the current exhibition on what I have always known to be Montezuma, the king of the Aztecs. However, I learned that he is now known as Moctezuma and his people are now called the Mexica. Moctezuma was ruler from 1502 to 1520 until the Spanish invaded his capital. It is a fascinating exhibition.

The second was the permanent display of artefacts from Ancient Persia or - as we call it now - Iran. This includes some bits from Persepolis and the famous Cyrus cylinder. I'm working on a short story called "The Man From Iran" and my look around Room 52 was part of my research.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Getting a film made is a tough enterprise. This site explains one man's attempt to have the story of his father - a British Military Intelligence officer in the Second World War - made into a movie.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In just under two weeks time, Vee and I will be travelling to Iran for what promises to be an unusual and fascinating holiday.

In preparation for the trip, I have already read a full history of Iran which I reviewed here. Now I have just completed a more detailed history of the last century which I have reviewed here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the creation of the the People's Republic of China.

You can read my review of a book on the history of China here, my review of a biography of Mao here, and my review of a book on modern China here.

In 2000, Vee and I made a fascinating trip to China, which I have described here, and next year - a decade later - we plan to revisit the country, but this time with our Chinese 'family', Hua, Zhihao and Joshua.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vee and I are really looking forward to our holiday in Iran in a month or so's time (nuclear crisis permitting).

Before visiting a new country, I always read about its history and Iran - or Persia as it was known for a long time - has some 6,000 years of it. I've just finished a concise account of the history of this fascinating nation and reviewed it here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This weekend, my wife and I - together with friends Ivan and Ros - visited a place called Brickendonbury which is a little bit north of London in Hertfordshire.

The Brickendonbury estate, has a long and colourful history. Little is known about it until Saxon times (approx. 500 AD), when the hill site was claimed by the Saxon, Brica. The word don means hill - the bury was added in medieval times and indicates the site of a manor house: hence Brickendonbury, a fortified manor house standing on Brica's hill. The estate is mentioned in the Domesday survey of 1086 and parts of the mansion are known to date back to the late 1600s.

The part of the history of Brickendonbury which really interested us four was the Second World War.

From 1939-45, the site was used by the Special Operations Executive, European Theatre of War, and became Station 17, specialising in training agents and resistance workers in industrial sabotage. Vital operations, such as the daring raid to destroy the Norwegian heavy water plant (part of Germany's nuclear bomb programme) and the bombing of the Renault engineering plant in France, were launched from the estate. A television documentary "The Secret War" showed archive film of parts of the estate being used for rehearsing such raids and a reminder of these activities was found during building work in 1973, when unexploded hand grenades and live mortar shells were discovered in the drained moat!

Station 17 of the SOE had a link with the killing of the Nazi leader in Prague Reinhard Heydrich in May 1942. The two SOE agents who carried out the assassination were the Czech Jan Kubiš and and the Slovak Jozef Gabčík and both spent some time as part of their training at Brickendonbury.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The victim was a 43-year old unmarried Catholic farmer called Franz Honiok and he was murdered by the SS on 31 August 1939 at a radio station in Gliwice in what was then Germany.

You can read the details in this fascinating article in the "Daily Telegraph".

Posted by Roger Darlington at 05:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In two days time, events in Britain will mark the country's declaration of war on German exactly 70 years ago. For the Poles, however, the war started on 1 September 1939 when the German battleship "Schleswig-Holstein" opened fire at point-blank range on the Polish fort at Westerplatte. Events to mark the occasion have been held today in Poland - see here - and you can read about the seven-day Battle of Westerplatte here.

We tend to think of major wars - and World War II was overwhelmingly the most destructive in history - as having neat start and end dates. But, in reality, when the Second World War began and ended depends on one’s national perspective.

For China and Japan, the war effectively started with the so-called Manchurian Incident on 18 September 1931. For Czechs and Slovaks, the war began on 15 March 1939 when the Germans occupied those parts of the country not already ‘given’ to Hitler at the Munich conference six months earlier.

Following Germany’s invasion of Poland, Britain declared war at 11 am on 3 September 1939 and France followed suit at 5 pm the same day. Italy did not declare war on France until 10 June 1940. The Soviet Union only entered the war when invaded by Germany on 22 June 1941. The United States did not enter the war until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

The Americans only declared war on the Japanese; on 11 December 1941, Hitler and Mussolini declared war on the USA for reasons that remain obscure but which effectively sealed the outcome of the war. The Soviet Union only declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945 (after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima).

For most of Europe, the war ended on Victory in Europe (VE) Day 8 May 1945 but, for the Soviet Union, VE Day was 9 May 1945. This was because the allies had agreed to celebrate victory on 9 May, but journalists broke the news prematurely. For military forces in Asia, the end of the war was on Victory in Japan (VJ) Day 15 August 1945.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This evening, I watched a really interesting television programme about the life of Attila, the notorious leader of the Huns.

The programme included detail of the Battle of Châlons in 451 when Attila's forces were defeated by a coalition led by the Roman general Flavius Aetius and the Visigothic king Theodoric I.

For many historians, this was one of the most decisive battles of Late Antiquity which determined the history of European civilisation.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Forty years ago, I set off to visit Northern Ireland for the first time. A week before, sectarian rioting had broken out in Belfast and Londonderry and troops moved into the cities. Like most people in the remainder of the UK, I was shocked by the events and could not understand how this could be happening in my country.

I was starting a year as sabbatical president of the students' union at my university at the time, so I took a week off and went over to see for myself what was happening. In both cities, I walked all the streets and districts where there had been violence, talked to lots of people on both sides of the sectarian divide, and took 60 black and white photographs.

I kept a detailed diary and concluded my visit with these words:

"Two weeks after the troops went in, it is impossible to say where Northern Ireland goes from here. The Callaghan [then Home Secretary] package appears to offer genuine hope if all sides are prepared to work for peace. However, one Catholic on the barricades told me; 'It's the lull before the storm'.

Yet renewed conflict need not be violent as the DCDA [Derry Citizens' Defence Association] are certainly considering a rate and rent strike. Unrest in some form, therefore, is likely to continue, as the bitterness of decades if not centuries cannot be wiped out in weeks or even months."

I seriously underestimated the scale and longevity of "the Troubles" which did not come to an end until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 after the passage of three decades and the death of some 3,500 civilians and soldiers. At the time of my visit, I did not know that, three years later, Jim Callaghan would interview me and employ me in the House of Commons and, five years later, I would be a Special Adviser in the Northern Ireland Office working for a Labour Government.

Incidentally, media coverage of this 40th anniversary is almost non-existent. What does this tell us?

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This week, the Imperial War Museum in London opened a fascinating new exhibition to mark the outbreak of World War Two on 3 September 1939 seventy years ago. The exhibition is called Outbreak 1939 and I visited it on the first day that it was open to the public.

Of course, when you think the Second World War began will probably depend on your nationality. So for the Czechs and Slovaks, effectively the war began in September 1938 which is the theme of one of my short stories entitled "The Edge Of War".

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Karel Kuttelwascher, my wife's father. He was a Czech pilot who fought with the Royal Air Force during the Second World War and became an outstanding night intruder ace who won the Distinguished Flying Cross twice in 42 days. He was only 42 when he died of a heart attack here in Britain.

Today, over in the Czech Republic, my wife Vee and her twin sister Mari will be attending the unveiling of a plaque in the village where their father was born. In the course of the next couple of days, they will give speeches and media interviews to mark the anniversary and I know that this will be a very proud time for them.

During the war, the media dubbed Karel Kuttelwascher 'the Czech Night Hawk' which is the origin of the name of this blog. You can read a summary of his story here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Earlier this week, BBC4 screened a very well-made and rather timely drama documentary on the efforts of Dr James Niven to combat the impact of the second wave of Spanish flu in Manchester in 1918. The programme was called "The Forgotten Fallen" and will be repeated.

As a result of Niven's efforts, only 2,000 of the Manchester's one million population died. In London, 10,000 lost their lives at a rate of 1,500 a week at its peak. But there was an unexpected third wave. The final death toll for the UK was 228,000.

It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 100 million people were killed worldwide with the figure of 70 million often quoted. An estimated 500 million people, one third of the world's population (approximately 1.6 billion at the time), became infected.

A recent study in the "New England Journal of Medicine" reports that the current swine flu virus is a fourth generation descendant of the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak and contains the same H1N1 virus. "All human-adapted Influenza A viruses are descendants, direct or indirect, of that founding virus" says Jeffrey Taubenberger, a co-author of the report.

For more information on Spanish flu, see here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Forty years ago today, man first walked on the moon and, all over the world, the media is rightly commemorating this spectacular event. At the time, I was a 21 year old student at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). The Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957 when I was nine, so I spent my early years following excitedly each step of the so-called space race and I was certainly not going to miss Apollo 11.

In July 1969, I had just started a one-year sabbatical period as full-time President of the UMIST Students' Union and I secured the permission of the Institute to keep the student union building open all night so that any student who wished could witness the moon landing live. Of course, all the undergraduates had already gone home, but around 50 postgraduates stayed up with me to witness this hugely historic event.

The actual landing was at 9.17 pm our time and at 3.56 am Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, followed shortly afterwards by Edwin Aldrin. Meanwhile Michael Collins circled the moon in the command module. It was an occasion never to be forgotten as ghost-like figure floated across the television screen like cartoon characters.

I had no sleep at all that night and continued to follow the media coverage during the following day. I waited until the blast off from the moon at 6.54 pm before I finally went to bed at 7.45 pm. Mission accomplished.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On 10 July 1941, hundreds of Jewish residents of Jedwabne in German Nazi occupied Poland were massacred in an infamous incident that to this day divides opinion, especially in Poland.

Following a round up of local Jews by local Poles at the instruction of the German occupiers, a group of about 40 Jews was taken to a pre-emptied barn, killed and buried, while most of the remaining Jews, estimated at around 250-400, including many women and children, were led to the same barn later that day, locked inside and burned alive using kerosene in the presence of eight German gendarmes, who shot those who tried to escape.

After the war, responsibility was ascribed to approximately 40 non-Jewish ethnic Polish men from or around the town of Jedwabne. Some of them were later tried by the Polish communist authorities and convicted for their crimes as treason to the Polish nation.

The event is in the news today because a British Jewish leader has called on David Cameron to dissociate the Conservative Party from the views on the massacre of Polish Member of the European Parliament Michal Kaminiski. You can read more on the event itself here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This video clip is about 11 minutes, but you should watch it because it tells a remarkable story.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What each of us knows and doesn't know is very varied and very personal, but I've been surprised and saddened at how few people I know have heard of the Katyn massacre of 1940.

The Wikipedia page on the subject introduces it as follows:

"The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, 'Katyń crime'), was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps. Dated March 5, 1940, this official document was then approved (signed) by the entire Soviet Politburo including Joseph Stalin and Beria.

The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, the most commonly cited number being 21,768. The victims were murdered in the Katyn forest in Russia, the Kalinin (Tver) and Kharkov prisons and elsewhere. About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, the rest being Poles arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials." Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer, the Soviets were able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, and the Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship."

The reason I mention the subject of the Katyn massacre now is that an impressive and moving Polish film on the subject has just been given a very limited release in Britain and I have recently seen it. You probably won't get the chance to see the film yourself, but you can read my review and I would encourage you to read more of the Wikipedia article.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 01:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Even today, there are constant references in the media to Nazi Germany, otherwise known as the Third Reich. Adolf Hitler boasted that his Reich would last for a thousand years but, in fact, it only lasted for 12 years (1933-1945).

But, if this was the Third Reich, when were the First and Second Reichs?

In fact, the First Reich is the title retrospectively given to the Holy Roman Empire of which modern-day Germany was only one part. This lasted from the beginning of the 9th century to beyond the middle of the 19th century - almost a thousand years (and presumably the inspiration for Hitler's vain boast).

The Second Reich (also known as The German Empire) is the term given to the period from the formation of modern-day Germany by Otto von Bismark to the end of the First World War - the period from 1871 to 1919 (the Weimar Republic of 1919-1933 is not called a reich).

Further information here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Arguably he was the Englishman who has had the most influence on world affairs while combining the least recognition among today's English. He played a key intellectual role in both the American Revolution and the French Revolution and can be seen as one of the founders of the modern democratic state.

Today is the 200th anniversary of his death.

You can read his Wikipedia profile here and a BBC online anniversary feature here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 01:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have visited Tiananmen Square in Beijing on two occasions - once in 2000 and again in 2001. You can read about my first visit here.

Of course, today we remember what happened in the square and surrounding streets on 4 June 1989 - exactly 20 years ago. One woman who was there in the early stages of the protest and has recently made a return visit to Beijing was banned novelist Ma Jian who has written this moving piece. She notes:

"The Chinese have made a faustian pact with the government, agreeing to forsake demands for political and intellectual freedom in exchange for more material comfort. They live prosperous lives in which any expression of pain is forbidden."

"The 19th century was essentially the century of Britain; the 20th century was unquestionably the century of the United States; the 21st century might become the century of China. It depends on many factors.

It depends on the quality of the political leadership and, in the short term, Jiang Zemin is due to be succeeded by the younger Hu Jintao. It depends on the extent to which the economic changes are followed by political changes, including the development of a civil society with a free media, pressure groups, independent trade unions, and ultimately political parties. It depends on how capably and rapidly the economy moves from the bricks and mortar of the industrial society to the clicks and bricks of the information society. It depends on how China uses its growing industrial and military strength at home, specifically in relation to Tibet and Taiwan, and in the global marketplace."

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Henry VIII - who reigned from 1509 to 1547 - is probably the best-known British monarch because of the size of his body and the number of his wives. But there was much more to the man who provoked the English reformation, the dissolution of the monasteries, the creation of a powerful navy and the promotion of the English language.

The British Library is currently showing an excellent exhibition entitled "Henry VIII: man and monarch". It is really well done and enormously informative with fascinating artefacts from the 16th century. I visited it this week with my sister who was down from Leicester and we were both impressed and educated.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

At the beginning of the Second World War, British Prime Minister Winston felt compelled to order the Royal Navy to attack the pride of the French naval fleet in 'Operation Catapult', an assault which caused some 1,300 deaths and around 350 injuries - all of them citizens of France, our leading ally in the struggle against Nazi Germany. It happened at the North African port of Mers-el-Kébir in the late afternoon of 3 July 1940.

This was arguably the toughest decision that Churchill had to take in the course of the war and may well have been decisive in denying the French vessels to the Germans and in convincing the Americans of Britain's determination to resist Hitler. But the chances are that you've never heard of the incident.

I've known about the operation for a long time because I came across it while researching for a book I wrote some 25 years ago. It was a biography of my wife's father Karel Kuttelwascher, a Czech pilot who at this stage of the war was close to Mers-el-Kébir with the French III/3 Squadron. The squadron flew a couple of sorties over the port just after the British attack but none of the Czechs with the squadron was allowed to fly that day because they were felt to have divided loyalties, since the Battle of France had been lost and the Czechs were planning to escape to Britain to continue the fight.

I was reminded of 'Operation Catapult' this week when Channel Four screened a documentary called "Churchill's Darkest Decision". The programme featured both British and French naval crew involved in the event and underlined the morally complex decisions that have to be made in war.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Many of you will have read the book "Schindler's Ark" or seen the film "Schindler's List" and know how the Czech businessman Oscar Schindler managed to affect the escape of almost 1,200 Jews from Poland so that they missed certain death in the Nazi concentration camps of World War Two. But what about the Hungarian Jewish businessman Israel Kasztner who negotiated with Adolf Eichmann in Hungary to enable almost 1,700 Jews to escape the gas chambers. This was the largest single group to be saved from the Holocaust - but I'm guessing that you've never heard of the incident.

This is because historically Israel Kasztner has been a hugely controversial figure, no more so that in Israel itself where he was a Government Minister after the war and the subject of an infamous court trial before he was assassinated outside his home in Tel Aviv. His critics argue that he was a Nazi collaborator; his defenders believe that he no choice but to negotiate with the Germans if he was to enable any Jews to leave Hungary alive.

This week I saw a fascinating BBC4 television programme entitled "The Jew Who Dealt With The Nazis". Among those interviewed were Kasztner's daughter, one of his grand-daughters and the man who assassinated him. The programme brought out very clearly how morally complex was the position of Jewish leaders in Occupied Europe as they struggled to comprehend what today we call the Holocaust and to do what they could to give some Jews a chance to live.

Of course, the Holocaust raises so many moral issues and a good introduction to this huge subject can be found in the book reviewed here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today Vee and I attended the 60th birthday celebration of someone who has been a dear friend for over 20 years. The event - attended by around 40 family and friends - was held in premises almost opposite the synagogue that she and her husband attend.

It was a very joyful occasion but, in her own remarks, she deliberately struck a sober note. She told us that, when she was 23 and living in Israel, she was meeting a friend from a flight when she was caught up in the Lod Airport massacre of 30 May 1972. In that appalling incident, three Japanese terrorists killed 24 people and injured 78 others.

Our friend was one of the wounded with an injury to her leg. Next to her was a man who died. In her short speech, she explained how that day taught her the fine line between life and death and the need always to celebrate life with family and friends. There could not be a more powerful lesson for us all.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Regular readers of NightHawk will know that I was in Prague for Easter. During my visit, I viewed a photographic exhibition in Prague Castle of Czechoslovak soldiers in the First World War. Now here's a quiz question: on whose side did Czechoslovaks fight in the Great War?

In a way, it's a trick question because they fought on both sides. Many fought with the forces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (of which the Czech and Slovak lands were then a part) on the southern (Italian) and eastern (Galicia) fronts, but others fought for the Entente powers in what became known as legions in Russia and France [see here].

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week, I was able to visit the British Museum and see the fascinating exhibition "Shah 'Abbas: The Remaking of Iran". This tells the story of seventeenth-century Iran through the reign and legacy of one of its most influential rulers, Shah 'Abbas I who reigned 1587–1629 and founded the capital of Isfarhan.

I would always have been interested in this exhibition because I am keen on Middle Eastern history and Islamic architecture, but I was especially attracted to the event because I hope that we will holiday in Iran in the Autumn.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I know that everyone is now suffering the impact of the global economic crisis and that some people have been hit much harder than others. But it is important to keep a sense of perspective.

I'm currently reading "A History Of Modern Britain" by Andrew Marr (born 1959) which is essentially a review of the last six decades or so since the end of the Second World War. Since I'm now 60, this is more or less coincident with my own life experience.

What has really struck me about the early sections of the book - especially because I was too young to remember the times - was the longevity and impact of rationing in Britain. It started in 1940 and you can read some of the detail here. I think younger British readers and all my American readers will be astonished at the privations experienced by the British at that time.

But it continued long after the end of the war. Fourteen years of food rationing in Britain ended at midnight on 4 July 1954, when restrictions on the sale and purchase of meat and bacon were lifted. The war had been over nine years and I was aged six.

Do you remember rationing? What was it like?

Posted by Roger Darlington at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm guessing that you've never heard of the film "The Counterfeiters" - but this Austrian work the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film last year. I'm guessing that you've never heard of "Operation Bernhard" - but this secret German plan devised during the Second World War was the largest counterfeiting operation in history. And I'm sure that you've never met Adolf Burger, the Slovak Jew who wrote the book which inspired the account of "Operation Bernhard" in "The Counterfeiters".

I admit, until this afternoon, I had not seen the film, known of the operation, or met the author. You can read my review of the film and account of his talk here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the last couple of weeks, I've done a number of postings mentioning that I was reading "The Nazi Holocaust: Its History And Meaning" by Ronnie Landau. I've now finished this excellent work and you can read my review here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As regular readers of NightHawk will know, I'm currently reading "The Nazi Holocaust: Its History And Meaning". The book mentions in passing the case of a Slovak Jew called Rudolf Vrba and I recently saw a television programme about this remarkable story.

Together with his friend Alfréd Wetzler, Vrba managed to escape from the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. They made their way back to Slovakia where they told their astonishing tale of the Nazi industrial extermination of the Jews in occupied Poland. At first, they were disbelieved but, even when their account was circulated, the response was not what they expected and wanted.

Read this incredible story here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As I've mentioned in a couple of recent postings, I'm reading a book entitled "The Nazi Holocaust: Its History And Meaning". Of course, it is widely known - if not accepted by Holocaust denialists - that some six million Jews perished in the Shoah.

Without in any way wanting to diminish the uniqueness and the horror of the Nazi extermination of the Jews, the terrible truth is that the death toll in the Second World War was far far greater than six million, but this figure is not so much in the public consciousness, not least because historians have made - and continue to make - varying estimates.

The Wikipedia page concerning the casualties of the Second World War provides one country by country breakdown which totals an incredible 73 million.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, I'm reading a book entitled "The Nazi Holocaust: Its History And Meaning". I'm learning a lot that I didn't know.

For instance, I was not familiar with the Evian Conference which was held from 6-15 July 1938. This was convened at the request of Franklin D Roosevelt to address the plight of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany.

It was attended by 32 countries - including the USA and the UK - and 24 voluntary organisations. Both the United States and Britain declined to admit significantly more refugees. Only The Netherlands and Denmark - soon to be overrun by the Germans - agreed to a limited increase in the number of refugees.

The conference did not condemn the Nazis' treatment of the Jews in Germany and even went as far as to prepare a memorandum for the German Foreign Office acknowledging the right of the German government to introduce measures affecting its own subjects.

Ronnie Landau - author of the book I'm reading - writes "In effect, the Evian Conference may have justified and reinforced Nazi anti-Jewish ideology and helped move it on towards its momentous climax - the decision to implement the 'Final Solution'".

Further information on the conference here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If ever there was an historical event that captures the imagination, it is the Diet of Worms. To English-speaking school children, it must sound like the worst meal ever. Of course, a 'diet' is simply a gathering (the word comes from the Latin 'dieta') and Worms is a city - arguably the oldest - in Germany (it is pronounced 'vurms' in German).

So why mention the Diet of Worms today? Well, in 1521 the gathering opened on 28 January (it ran until 25 May). Had you forgotten this anniversary? Shame on you - for dinner, this evening, a diet of worms then.

The meeting of the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire at Worms was where Martin Luther defended the principles of the Reformation. Luther had already been excommunicated by Pope Leo X, but Emperor Charles V granted him safe conduct to a hearing at the Diet. On 17 April, Luther refused to recant his views. In May, the Diet issued the Edict of Worms, declaring Luther an outlaw and a heretic and banning his writings.

So now you know ...

Posted by Roger Darlington at 04:03 PM | Permalink

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 blog posting here]. Some time later, I attended the launch of the new edition of his book "The Nazi Holocaust: Its History And Meaning" [[my blog posting here].

I thought that today would be an appropriate time to start reading the book.

Ronnie Landau argues in the first chapter that the Holocaust is both unique and universal - unique as an entire event in terms of its scale, methods and purpose, but universal in the sense that so many component elements manifest themselves too often in both history and the present.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 of Jan Palach, a young student - the same age as me - who three days earlier set fire to himself as a protest against the acceptance by the Czechoslovak people of the so-called 'normalisation' which had followed the Warsaw Pact invasion of his country the year before.

On one of my earliest visits to what is now the Czech Republic (I've now been 21 times), I visited the grave of Jan Palach in Olsany cemetery in Prague. The city also has a square named after him.

More information here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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 damnation. If I'd managed to stay alive, none of my favourite interests would have been open to me: no printed books, no radio or television, no films, no Internet, few desserts, and no chances for international travel (except on the Crusades).

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

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 by about a third.

According to the account on Wikipedia:

"The total number of deaths worldwide is estimated at 75 million people, approximately 25–50 million of which occurred in Europe The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population. It may have reduced the world's population from an estimated 450 million to between 350 and 375 million in 1400."

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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 Reformation, the rise of humanism in the Italian Renaissance, and the beginnings of European overseas expansion. There is some variation in the dating of the edges of these periods which is due mainly to differences in specialization and focus of individual scholars."

"Dark Age or Dark Ages is a term in historiography referring to a period of cultural decline or societal collapse that supposedly took place in Western Europe between the fall of Rome and the eventual recovery of learning. The dating of the 'Dark Ages' has always been fluid, but the concept was originally intended to denote the entire period between the fall of Rome in the 5th century and the "Renaissance" or "rebirth" of classical values."

Now why do I ask these questions? It's because I've just started reading a book entitled "Medieval Britain: A Very Short Introduction". The term "medieval period" is often used synonymously with "Middle Ages", but this book covers the period 1066-1485 which is the time period accorded to the High and Late Middle Ages.

Of course, all these terms are pretty arbitrary, but I suppose we have to divide history into some kind of periods. Maybe, if humankind lasts long enough, some future historian will suggest a new way of dividing history and our own period will be reclassified the Middle Ages.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 and how human inequality was created in a fascinating thesis summarised on this Wikipedia page.

Why did civilisation begin in the so-called fertile crescent of what we now call the Middle East? The Wikipedia page puts it this way:

"Diamond highlights two major environmental advantages of Eurasia over other areas in which farming apparently developed independently. The various Eurasian inventors of farming, and especially those in "South West Asia" (roughly Mesopotamia and Turkey) had by far the best natural endowment of crops and of domesticable animals in the size range from goats or dogs upwards - the superiority in domesticable animals was the more extreme, as other areas had at most two and often none. Eurasia's other big advantage is that its mainly East-West axis provides a huge area with similar latitudes and therefore climates."

"The book's title is a reference to the means by which European nations conquered populations of other areas and maintained their dominance, often despite being vastly out-numbered - superior weapons provided immediate military superiority (guns), European diseases weakened the local populations and thus made it easier to maintain control over them (germs), and centralized governmental systems promoted nationalism and powerful military organizations (steel). Hence the book attempts to explain, mainly by geographical factors, why Europeans had such superior military technology and why diseases to which Europeans were immune devastated conquered populations."

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 Baader-Meinhof Group - was postwar West Germany's most violent and prominent militant left-wing terrorist group. It operated from the late 1960s to 1998, committing numerous crimes, especially in the autumn of 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as "German Autumn". It was responsible for 34 deaths and many injuries in its almost 30 years of activity.

Following Christian Klar's release, the only remaining RAF terrorist still behind bars is Birgit Hogefeld, 52, who has been in prison since 1993 for her involvement in the murder of a US soldier in a 1985 bomb attack on the US air base in Frankfurt. In November 1996, she was given three life imprisonment sentences and is currently held in a Frankfurt detention centre.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 03:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 the Americans and British betrayed him in not launching a Second Front in 1942 or again in 1943. As a result, the death toll suffered by the Soviet forces and people was horrific as spelled out in the book "No Simple Victory" by Norman Davies [see my review here].

Such a western assault would never have been successful in 1942, but one could make out a case for an invasion of France in 1943. In fact , the journalist John Grigg set out the arguments in his book "1943: The Victory That Never Was" [see my review here].

If the Second World War has ended in late 1943 or early 1944 instead of mid 1945, there would have been all sorts of consequences besides (probably) a lower overall death toll in Europe. The Soviet Union would have occupied less of Eastern Europe and the post-war balance of power on the continent might have been very different. Also the Soviet Union would have been able to allocate substantial forces to the war against Japan which would presumably have ended the war in the Pacific much sooner.

In turn, this would probably have meant that the atomic bomb would never have been used against the Japanese, both because it was not ready and it was not needed. If the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had never happened, what would have been the consequences for the subsequent Cold War between the USA and the USSR? Since we would not have known for sure the impact of the atomic bomb on civilian populations, would the power brokers in the Cold War era have been less reluctant to use the bomb than they were? We'll never know ...

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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 Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev.

You can read about him here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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) President (1825-1829).

I've just finished viewing a seven-part television series made by HBO on the life of John Adams. It has rightly been a great success, winning no less than 13 Emmys. The lead role is taken by Paul Giamatti who gives an outstanding performance among many fine portrayals.

Adams' death - shown in the final programme - was as remarkable as his life. On 4 July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, he died at his home in Quincy. Thomas Jefferson, his compatriot in their quest for independence, had died a few hours earlier on the very same day.

Ironically the whole series was brilliantly directed by a Briton: Tom Hooper [see his article]. He is the son of Richard Hooper whom I know mainly through his work as former Deputy Chairman of Ofcom.

What is striking about this life of one of America's 'Founding Fathers' is how resonant many of the themes are: the balance between the role of the federal government and the states, the extent to which the people can be trusted to guide politicians, the need to balance individual freedoms against the security needs of the nation, and the risk of entering an overseas war. Terrific stuff.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

This is the title of a book written by my good friend Jeremy Mitchell who served with me on the Ofcom Consumer Panel. Jeremy was born in 1929 and his father George Oswald Mitchell (G.O.M.) was one of the few British soldiers to serve right through the First World War from its outbreak on 5 August 1914 to the Armistice on 11 November 1918, the 90th anniversary of which we mark this Remembrance Sunday.

"Shapnel And Whizzbangs" - subtitled "A tommy in the trenches 1914-18" - is Jeremy's graphic account of his father's war based on the trench diary and notes that G.O.M. wrote at the time.

George Oswald Mitchell as
Sergeant Royal Engineers Special Brigade

In a wonderful case of cross-generational co-operation, Jeremy's 12 year old grandson Eddie has created a web site for his grandfather's book about his great grandfather, so you can read a sample passage here and, if you wish, order the book here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Seventy years ago today, Czechoslovakia - now the Czech Republic and Slovakia - declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Since my wife is half-Czech, I have a special interest in Czech history.

That's why I've read several books on Czech history - reviewed here - and Czech historical figures - reviewed here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is the 100th anniversary of the first powered flight in this country - a distance of just 1,390 feet - which was actually made by an American and you can find some information here.

Thanks to my father, who trained as a fighter pilot with the RAF, I have a lifelong enthusiasm for aviation which is reflected in five sections on my web site here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:35 AM | Permalink

One of my closest friends - a Jewish man from Slovakia - is involved in a project describing the experience of another Jewish Slovak man discovering how his father died in the Second World War and the implications of this story for the present time. My friend’s translation agency translated the project from Slovak to English and his family knew the author's family.

Fedor Gal was born in the concentration camp at Terezin north of Prague which I once visited with another dear friend, a Czech Jew whose mother had been imprisoned there. By the time of his birth, his father had been shot on a death march from Sachsenhausen to Schwerin. It is a moving story that you can learn about here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week, I had a meeting at the postal regulator Postcomm in my cpacity as a member of the Council ofthe postal consumer watchdog Postwatch. I had some time to spare and, since Postcomm is located close to the Imperial War Museum, I called into the museum and viewed one of ts current temporary exhibitions.

The exhibition is called "From War To Windrush". It tells the personal stories of the involvement of black men and women from the West Indies and Britain in the First and Second World Wars.

The "Empire Windrush" is the ship that brought to Britain the first large-scale group of black immigrants. It docked on 22 June 1948 - the week of my birth.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As we watch the blood sport that is the American presidential election, let us mark today the anniversary of the Constitution under which the election is being held.

The United States Constitution was adopted on 17 September 1787, by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and later ratified by conventions in each state in the name of "The People". It has since been amended twenty-seven times, the first ten amendments being known as the Bill of Rights.

You can read more about the US Constitution here and I have written "A Short Guide To The American Political System" here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:00 AM | Permalink

How did we get here? We could have come from another planet; or God could have created the world in six days; or humankind could be the product of a long, slow, almost accidental process of evolution. I subscribe firmly to the last explanation. But how smooth and linear was that evolutionary process?

There's an article in today's "Observer" newspaper than mentions the view that around 70,000 years ago humankind was almost wiped out by the most powerful volcanic explosion in two million years.

This event occurred at Mount Toba in Sumatra which is why the theory is known as the Toba catastrophe theory. The idea was first put forward in 1998 by Stanley H. Ambrose. You can read more about it here.

So glad we made it guys!

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the summer of 1968, I was 20 and becoming very interested in international politics. I followed with interest and excitement the attempts by the Czechoslovak Communists to reform their political structures and I was desperately saddened and angered by the invasion of the Warsaw Pact forces which brutally crushed these efforts at reform. I did not know then that years later I would marry a woman whose father was Czech and visit the country over 20 times.

This evening, I was at the Czech Embassy in London to hear a lecture by Dr Oldrich Tuma entitled "The Prague Spring After 40 Years: Anti-Communist Revolution Or Campaign To Reform Communism?" The answer to the question appears to be: both. The liberalisation process started as the latter but, as people took control of developments away the Communist Party, it became something of the former - which is what scared the Soviet leadership and brought about the occupation.

Before attending the lecture, I had coffee and a chat with my close Slovak friend Ivan Sloboda. I took him to a place he had never seen before: Cafe Diana which is just opposite the Czech and Slovak Embassies and very close to where Princess Diana used to live. Although i am constitutionally a republican (but certainly not politically a Republican!), I find this cafe fascinating because the walls are covered from top to bottom with photographs of Diana.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Between 1968 and 1972, nine American spacecraft voyaged to the moon and 12 American men walked on its surface, the first (and last) human beings to ever leave this planet and land on another celestial body. This incredible story is told in a remarkable documentary "In The Shadow Of The Moon" which was released last year but I've only seen this week [my review here].

I was 21 when I watched live television coverage of Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. When the last such moon walk took place in 1972, I never imagined that the following 36 years would see the surface of the moon untouched by man. This documentary captures a very special time.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Chinese began printing 600 years before Johannes Gutenberg introduced the technique in Germany. They built the first chain drive 700 years before the Europeans. And they made use of a magnetic compass at least a century before the first reference to it appeared elsewhere. So why, in the middle of the 15th century, did this advanced civilisation suddenly cease its spectacular progress?

A Cambridge academic called Joseph Needham (1900-1995) contributed so much to the study of science in China's Middle Kingdom that the issue is the known as "the Needham question". According to a recent article in "The Economist":

"Needham never fully worked out why China’s inventiveness dried up. Other academics have made their own suggestions: the stultifying pursuit of bureaucratic rank in the Middle Kingdom and the absence of a mercantile class to foster competition and self-improvement; the sheer size of China compared with the smaller states of Europe whose fierce rivalries fostered technological competition; its totalitarianism."

Europe was home to the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution. The Chinese had none of these - but they're catching up incredibly fast.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've just finished reading a huge work which in effect is the autobiography of Fidel Castro who has just stepped down as president of Cuba after an incredible 49 years. You can read my review here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It is 50 years today since the Munich air disaster of 6 February 1958, when British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on its third attempt to takeoff from a slush-covered runway at the Munich-Riem airport. On board the plane was the Manchester United football team, nicknamed the Busby Babes, along with a number of supporters and journalists. Twenty-three of the 44 passengers on board the aircraft died in the disaster - including eight of the Busby Babes.

Except for the first 18 months of my life, I lived in Manchester until I was 22. At the time of the air disaster, I was nine years old. I remember a palpable sense of gloom descending over the whole city. I noted that one of the dead players - 28 year old Roger Byrne - had the same first name as me. However, I probably felt the loss most of 21 year old Duncan Edwards, the star of the United team who survived for two weeks before dying of his injuries. He was born in Dudley in the Midlands, just down the road from my own birth place in Sedgley.

Many, many years years later, I wrote a biography of my wife's father, a wartime night fighter ace. He died in 1959. At the time of his death, he was a pilot with BEA and one of those who attended his funeral was James Thain, the pilot at the controls in Munich.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've only just watched a recording I made of a weekend Channel Four programme about Operation Able Archer in 1983.

It was the closest that we came to World War Three with the exception of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and I confess that I had never heard of it. Fundamentally the crisis came down to a total lack of understanding of NATO/US intentions by the then USSR.

The Cold War was one of the maddest periods of human history when the stakes in terms of potential loss of life were never higher. Let us hope that we never see its like again and that we are now a world that has better communication and understanding.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

As you will see from my web site essay on naming practices around the world - which I mentioned in a posting earlier this week - I am fascinated by names.

My father was English and my mother was Italian and they named their first child of three - me - Roger. I was always very clear that I was called Roger because my father was a pilot in the Royal Air Force ("Roger, that!").

But recently I came across a King Roger who ruled in Sicily in the 12th century. He extended his empire to embrace much of southern Italy including the Kingdom of Naples.

My mother came from Naples (indeed my parents were married there) and I wonder now whether she was happy with the name because of the echo with a local king. Both my parents are dead, so I can't ask them.

Incidentally King Roger II of Sicily was a politically enlightened and religiously tolerant leader.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:48 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the infamous rape of Nanjing in China by the armed forces of Japan. I visited Nanjing during a tour of China in 2000 [my account of time in the city here].

For the people of China, the incident is still a raw and and bitter issue. For many in Japan - a country I have also visited - this is something they would rather not think about and about which they are often in denial.

The Wikipedia page on the massacre states:

"The extent of the atrocities is debated between China and Japan, with numbers ranging from some Japanese claims of several hundred] to the Chinese claim of a non-combatant death toll of 300,000. A number of Japanese researchers consider 100,000 – 200,000 to be an approximate value. Other nations usually believe the death toll to be between 150,000 – 300,000."

By and large, the German people have faced up candidly to the horrors of the Nazi regime. The people of Japan would do well to start looking more honestly at the infamous deeds committed by their military in the run up to and during the Second World War.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my favourite sayings is: "It's isn't over till it's over - and then it isn't over." You think something is history and then somebody or something comes along to change your perception of things.

The child who finds that her parent is actually not her parent at all because she was in fact adopted. The wife who finds that her happy marriage was a sham because her husband has been having an affair for years. The relative you thought was dead who turns up alive.

The discovery of the Gnostic Gospels that changes our view of Christianity. The body of Christopher Columbus in Seville Cathedral that turns out not be be him. The weapons of mass destruction held by Saddam Hussein that turn out not to exist.

In this vein, there's excitement among my American brethen because it may be that a new photograph has been discovered showing Abraham Lincoln arriving at Gettysburg to deliver his famous address. You can check it put here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is Remembrance Sunday.

Harry Patch - now aged 109 - is the last surviving British soldier of the First World War. You can read his story here.

Lest we forget ...

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In Britain, this evening is celebrated as Bonfire Night - a commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot, the failed attempt by the Catholic Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators to blow up the Protestant Parliament in 1605. But how exactly did Fawkes die?

After being found guilty, the conspirators were taken to Old Palace Yard in Westminster and St Paul's Yard, where they were hanged, drawn, and quartered. Fawkes, however, managed to avoid the worst of this execution by jumping from the scaffold where he was supposed to be hanged, breaking his neck before he could be drawn and quartered.

So, what exactly does it mean to say that someone was hanged, drawn, and quartered? You can learn the details of this revolting form of execution here.

No wonder Fawkes jumped ...

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

No, neither had I - until recently when I was on a business trip to Croatia and visited the Museum of Zagreb where the event was mentioned in a display. However, if you are Croatian, it will be a very familiar and sensitive matter. It shows how little we know of other nations' history.

You can read about the Bleiburg massacre here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

In 1889, the Konopiste Castle just outside Prague was obtained as his home by the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferndinand d'Este, the heir to the imperial throne. In 1907, he employed an English botanist to cross-breed roses at Konopiste in order to produce a black variety. It seems that he was warned that black roses bring death and war.

Apparently it took until 1914 to cultivate the rose. Later that same year, Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, leading directly to the outbreak of the First World War. Coincidence?

So what has all this got to do with me? Well, last week I was in Prague for the graduation ceremony of a friend [see my blog posting here] and I visited the castle at Konopiste which is walking distance from where my friend now works as a newly-qualified doctor. A few weeks previously, I was on a break in Sarajevo and saw the exact spot where the Archduke was assassinated by a Serb extremist [see my account of the trip here]. More coincidence?

I only ask because I've met some people who argue that there is no such thing as coincidence and that instead everything happens for a reason. So should I be worried?

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

As recorded in this item on the BBC web site, today is the 40th anniversary of the summary execution of the Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara following his capture the previous day by Bolivian army forces. Today Che's body lies in the town of Santa Clara in Cuba.

The next holiday for Vee and me - not till Spring 2008 - will be to Cuba and our tour will visit the mausoleum and museum in Santa Clara. Vee has always had a special affection for Che which has nothing to do with his politics. Her brother died of asthma when he was only 21 and Che was asthmatic.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Outside of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, few people have probably heard of Tomas Masaryk but, in those two countries, he is warmly remembered as the founding father of the state of Czechoslovakia which existed from 1918 to 1993. Today is the 70th anniversary of his death and an opportunity for a wider audience to acknowledge his character and achievements.

I am very familiar with the life of Tomas Masaryk because my wife is half-Czech and I have a deep interest in the history of Czechoslovakia. Indeed Tomas Masaryk's son Jan - who was then the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister in exile - attended the baptism of my wife's older brother in 1942.

You can read my review of a biography of Tomas and Jan Masaryk here. Also you can read my review of a book of interviews with Tomas Masaryk here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today is the anniversary of the massacre at Peterloo. You may never have heard of this incident. But I lived in Manchester until I was 23 and, during my university course, I spent a lot of time studying at the city's Central Library in St Peter's Square, the site of the Peterloo event.

The Peterloo Massacre of 16 August 1819 was the result of a cavalry charge into the crowd at a public meeting at St Peter's Fields in Manchester. Eleven people were killed and over 500, including many women and children, were injured.

The meeting had been organised by the Manchester Patriotic Union Society, a political group that agitated for radical parliamentary reform and the repeal of the corn laws. One of the main speakers was Henry Hunt who advocated annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and the ballot.

Less than 2% of the population had the vote at the time. So the event is rightly seen as one important stepping stone in the long path to the parliamentary democracy that we enjoy today.

You'll find a massive amount of information on the Peterloo massacre on this special site with an overview on this page.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The force of the explosion was equivalent to twenty million tonnes of TNT and a thousand times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. An estimated sixty million trees were felled over an area of over two thousand square kilometres and yet apparently nobody was killed.

It happened at 7.15 am on 30th June 1908 when a giant fireball, as bright the sun, exploded in the sky over Tunguska in central Siberia. The suggested explanations vary from asteroids and comets to ball lightning, black holes and alien spaceships.

Next year will see the centenary of this extraordinary event and no doubt there will be all sorts of articles and programmes about it. This evening, I watched a fascinating programme on the History Channel which will be repeated. Also you can find further information on the event here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:53 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I've recently watched a couple of programmes on Channel Four called "Athens: The truth About Democracy". These programmes were presented by historian Bettany Hughes who would make any programme watchable.

In fact, the subject matter itself was fascinating and the most intriguing question raised was why, in a society enjoying more freedom and democracy than any the world had ever seen, would the 70-year-old philosopher Socrates be tried and be put to death for what he was teaching? The trial of Socrates raises enough interest even today to fill a web site and Bettany Hughes is currently writing a book on Socrates.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 01:26 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I've always thought that racism, as well as being morally repugnant, is intellectually illogical because, if you trace back anyone's antecedents, you quickly arrive in another country and ultimately of course we all evolved from the first humans in Africa.

This week, "Nature" magazine has published a study confirming our African origins. There's a report here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 02:01 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In spite of my long-standing interest in the Second World War, I had no idea until this week that there was a full-scale battle on North American soil. The location was the island of Attu at the western-most reaches of the Aleutian chain.

The fighting was fierce and the death toll ran into thousands. You can read about the battle here.

What drew my attention to this little-known aspect of World War Two was a tiny item in a newspaper explaining that US and Japanese officials have just found four mass graves which they believe hold the remains of around 500 soldiers.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

At last I've finished reading the 500-page work "Europe At War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory" written by the British historian Norman Davies. The main theme of this work is that the western nations have failed to comprehend and acknowledge the scale of the battles and the deaths on the Eastern Front which are such as to require a balanced judgement to conclude that "the Soviet role was enormous and the Western role was respectable but modest".

For instance, consider this table which sets out estimates of deaths in the major individual battles and campaigns.

The first seven of these campaigns were on the Eastern Front and, to give some kind of perspective, the death toll in Operation Barbarossa - the German invasion of the USSR - was 12 times that of the the opening phase of the invasion of Normandy by the Western allies. Controversially Davies opines: "All in all, the open-minded observer will be tempted to view the war effort of the Western powers as something of a sideshow."

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the many subjects in which I am interested is history and I've just started reading the 500-page work "Europe At War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory" written by the British historian Norman Davies. This contains many fascinating facts, figures and insights.

For instance, consider this table which sets out estimates of military war dead in Europe between 1939-1945.

Davies writes: "the most obvious conclusion stands out a mile: the war assumed a far grander scale in the East than in any of the fronts where the Western Allies were involved".

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:59 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

How did it start and how will it finish? These are HUGE questions but, when I was on holiday in Israel recently, I read a very interesting book on the subject which I've now reviewed here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

The "Ladies Home Journal" of December 1900 contained a fascinating article by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr entitled “What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years”. You can read it here.

I particularly this: 'Wireless telephone and telegraph circuits will span the world. A husband in the middle of the Atlantic will be able to converse with his wife sitting in her boudoir in Chicago. We will be able to telephone to China quite as readily as we now talk from New York to Brooklyn. By an automatic signal they will connect with any circuit in their locality without the intervention of a “hello girl”.'

Spot on! But no reference to anything like the Internet.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:10 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I returned yesterday from a week in Israel - my first visit. Yom HaShoah is a day of rememberance of the Holocaust which is marked on 15 April each year in Israel and among Jewish communities around the world. My American Jewish friend Art Shostak has written an article to mark the event and you can read it below.

Continue reading "It is Yom HaShoah " »

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I will always associate the Falklands war of 1982 with my marriage to Vee. We were married on 19 March and a couple of weeks later the Argentinians invaded the islands. We have just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary and today is the 25th anniversary of the invasion. The invasion led to a 10-week conflict in which about 700 Argentininan and 255 British troops died.

Today the economic situation of the Fakland Islanders is much better. From around 1,800 on the eve of the invasion, the population now has surged to almost 3,000. GDP has exploded from a mere £4M a year to more than £75M. But, of course, we are no further forward in reaching some sort of understanding with Argentina on the future of the islands which they call the Malvinas.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:34 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This year is the 60th anniversary of the partition of India in 1947 (the actual date is 14-15 August) and this week Channel Four television ran a one and half hour drama documentary on the momentous events of that period.

It was good that the new post-war Labour Government immediately recognised the need to grant India independence and that they appointed someone of the calibre of Lord Mounbatten to do the job, but the rushed execution of the exercise was a disaster. Mountbatten was unable to persuade the Muslim leader Mohammad Ali Jinnah to agree to India as a whole being made independent and instead was compelled to create a separate Muslim state of Pakistan.

The division was impossible from the start because Hindus and Muslims had lived side by side in every corner of the sub-continent for centuries, but separation was especially fraught in the Punjab where there were many Sikhs as well as Hindus and Muslims.

The border between India and Pakistan was determined by the London lawyer, Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who had previously never travelled further east of Gibraltar. He was given just 30 days to do the job in secret and had not finished when partition took effect.

In the utter chaos which ensued, Muslims and Hindus slaughted men, women and children of the other religion and there was massive migration by people to the country where their faith represented the majority. The precise figures will never be known, but most estimates of the death toll are around half a million, while the numbers displaced were about 14.5 million.

Partition never solves sectarian issues but simply redefines them (see Ireland and Palestine). India still has 143 million Muslims, making it the country with the third largest number of Muslims in the world after Indonesia and Pakistan. India has sustained 60 years of democracy, even if it is a flawed version, while Pakistan lost its eastern component (to become Bangladesh) and is today a military dictatorship. The disputed region of Kashmir has been the cause of three wars between India and Pakistan which today are both nuclear powers.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:15 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The "Guardian" newspaper's web site has an interactive map showing the location and providing some details of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The only surviving great wonder is the Great Pyramid at Giza. I have visted this and you can read my account here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:30 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Over the years, I have visited many Holocaust memorials and museums and I have even been to both a detention camp and a concentration camp but, until this week, I had never actually heard and met a Holocaust survivor. My wife (who is half Czech) and I went along to the Czech Embassy in London for a meeting organised by the British Czech and Slovak Association where we heard the incredibly fluent and moving story of the Czech Holocaust survivor Zdenka Fantlová who is now well into her 80s (although he does not look it) and lives in London.

Her biography was published in Czech in 1996 and in German in 1997. In 2001, it was published in the USA as "My Lucky Star". At the Czech Embassy, I was able to purchase a copy of "My Lucky Star" and have it autographed by Zdenka Fantlová. The book is dedicated to the British soldier who saved her life in 1945 and she told me that she would love to have the book published in a British edition. She has the text on a disc, so technically a new edition would be an easy matter. If you have any suggestions as to how this could be done, please e-mail me.

Meanwhile - in brief - this is her story ....

Continue reading "The remarkable story of Zdenka Fantlová" »

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:46 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I was a sensitive and insecure teenager at school in Manchester studying for a major set of public examinations. But Lucie Chevalier - who has recently died aged 82 - was a member of the resistance in German-occupied Belgium. Lest we forget, you can read her amazing story here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 11:42 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

At the end of the Second World War, Britain was financially shattered. But help was at hand.

The US loaned $4.33bn (£2.2bn) to Britain in 1945, while Canada loaned US$1.19 bn (£607m) in 1946, at a rate of 2% annual interest.

How long do you think it took to repay those debts?

Continue reading "Britain's war debts" »

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:59 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I suspect that most Americans have but that most readers of NightHawk haven't. Certainly I hadn't until today. This Indian woman was a character in a new family film that I saw this afternoon: "Night At The Museum" [my review here].

Apparently Sacajawea is well-known as the Shoshone woman who led President Thomas Jefferson’s secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis’ friend, William Clark, on their expedition of 1805 to find the Pacific Ocean. You can learn the facts here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:24 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The plan is that our next holiday will be to Israel at Easter 2007. I'll have to read at least one history of the Middle East before we go.

Meanwhile there's a fascinating web site that presents an animated historical map of the Middle East which enables you to review 3000 years of history in 90 seconds. Check it out here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

At the time of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian revolution of 1956, I did a posting about the event. Today I finished reading an excellent new book published to coincide with the anniversary and you can read my review.

In the decade and a half since the collapse of Communism in Central & Eastern Europe, memories have already started to fade about the true nature of those repressive regimes and indeed anyone under 30 probably has no personal memory of those times. This book is a stark reminder of what the Soviet hegemony really meant.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

My wife's father was a Czech pilot who was the Royal Air Force's greatest night intruder ace in the Second World War. I told the story of Karel Kuttelwascher in a book published in 1985 called "Night Hawk" and his exploits are summarized in this piece on my web site.

Recently his story featured in a television programme for which my wife and I were interviewed extensively. It was made initially for the ITV's southern region. However, the programme is to be repeated tomorrow (Monday) on the UKTV History channel (537) . If you're interested in watching it, the timings are as follows:

• 10:30 to 11:00
• 16:30 to 17:00
• 22:30 to 23:00

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is the Czech National Day marking the anniversary of the declaration of independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire on 28 October 1918. To mark the event, the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences in the United Kingdom is holding a meeting in central London and I've been invited to give a speech.

I'll be talking about the wartime exploits of Flight Lieutenant Karel Kuttelwascher, a Czech who flew with the Royal Air Force in World War Two and became its greatest night intruder ace. He was known by the media as the "Czech Night Hawk" - hence the name of this blog - and he was my wife's father. You can read about his remarkable record here.

When I wrote Karel Kuttelwascher's biography in 1985, obviously it was essentially the story of one man, but I saw it as a tribute to all the Czechoslovaks who served with the wartime Royal Air Force. Indeed the dedication at the front of the book – a dedication I included in both English and Czech – read: “Dedicated to all the Czechoslovak airmen who flew with the RAF in World War II”. Therefore, in the second half of my talk today, I will say a little about the other Czechoslovaks who served with such distinction and valour. You can read about them here.

It will not be a large meeting but the Czech Ambassador to Britain Dr Jan Winkler will be there.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Throughout the media today, there are features marking the 50th anniversary of the start of the Hungarian revolution in 1956. I have some good Hungarian friends and have visited Hungary twice, so the anniversary resonates with me.

My first visit was in August 1991 when Vee and I spent a week on holiday in Budapest. We made a point of visiting the grave of Imre Nagy who was the reformist Prime Minister before and then during the time of the revolution.

My more recent visit was in September 2005 when I addressed a conference at Lake Balaton and then took the opportunity to revisit Budapest. I met my good friend Sandor Nagy who showed me the location of several of the key sites in the revolution and took this picture of me outside the Corvin Cinema where there was some of the fiercest fighting.

Roger at site of fighting in Hungarian revolution

Posted by Roger Darlington at 09:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

On the fifth anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11, there is really one subject on which I must blog today: the attack on the World Trade Center.

I have visted NewYork four times and twice I went to the top of the World Trade Center: 31 August 1980 alone & 11 April 1984 with my wife and son. So I have no difficulty relating to the pictures of that awful day and, in the last week, I've watched three television programmes about the attack.

It was not really the start of the 'war on terror' and certainly we are still far from the end of the struggle. For today, though, let us quietly remember the 3,000 who died that day in New York and Washington and on United 93.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:08 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Huge picture of Mao Zedong
at the entrance to the Forbidden City

Mao's place in Chinese history [see this book review] is assured but fiercely controversial. What is sure is that he would not recognise the China of today [see this book review]. It is an utterly fascinating experience and I am very keen to make a third visit.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 01:51 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

My father was trained as an RAF fighter pilot towards the end of World War Two (although he was too young to see action) which is why I am called Roger. My wife's father was the RAF's most successful night intruder pilot and this weblog is called NightHawk in his honour (you can read his story here). So I have a lifelong interest in Second World War pilots and aircraft.

When I was a youngster, the fighter ace Douglas Bader was a hero of mine. I read the biography "Reach For The Sky" and saw the film of the same title (read my review here). When I became older and more political, I realised that Bader was a very Right-wing individual and the gloss faded somewhat, but I always maintained an interest.

So it was fascinating to see this week a Channel Four programme entitled "Who downed Douglas Bader?" The aviation experts in the programme never found Bader's Spitfire, but Andy Saunders did make an original conclusion on the downing of the fighter.

In Paul Brickhill’s biography, "Reach for the Sky" (1954), and in Bader’s own 1973 autobiography, the war ace blamed a mid-air collision with a Messerschmitt 109, which he said had clipped his aircraft’s tail. But his story has always raised questions, and recent research by Saunders now suggests that he may have been a victim of ‘friendly fire’, shot down by one of his fellow RAF pilots called Buck Casson after becoming detached from his own squadron.

You can read a discussion about the programme here.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Unless you are Australian (and I don't suppose I have that many Ozzie visitors), you will have no idea that today Australia celebrates Kokoda Day and you will have no knowledge of the Kokoda Track campaign which the day commemorates. Yet the campaign was a turning point in the Second World War and consisted of a series of battles fought from July 1942 to January 1943 between Japanese and Australian forces in the Owen Stanley Ranges of New Guinea.

I confess that I had never heard of the event until I read a book of counter-factual history called "More What If?" (my review here). A chapter of this book speculates about what if, in the period July to September 1942, Australian troops had not managed to block the advance of the Japanese along the formidably inhospitable Kokoda Trail in New Guinea? Then the Japanese would have been able to take Port Moresby and use it to launch an invasion on the unprotected north-eastern Australia.

You can understand now why Australians remember and commemorate the valour of those soldiers.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:02 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Thirty years ago this month, there was the start of the Grunwick dispute, one of the bitterest industrial conflicts of my time. The location of the dispute was Willesden in north-west London, close to where I now live, and my local Trade Union Council will be holding an anniversary event next month.

I visted the picket line during the most violent part of the dispute when the police mobilised to stop the picketers from preventing scab labour from being bussed into the plant. I would like to think that new legislation by the Labour Government would not permit an employer to behave in this outrageous manner today, but I'm not so sure.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 08:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Today - 187 years ago - 60,000 workers, artisans, journeymen and radicals congregated on St Peter's Fields on the edges of Manchester to demand adult male suffrage and a repeal of the Corn Law price-fixing cartel. Workers had realised that without political power they would never reap the riches of industrialisation.

When the crowd failed to respond to the reading of the Riot Act, local officers tried to arrest the lead speakers and called in assistance from the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry along with the 15th Hussars. Inexperienced, scared, possibly drunk, the armed cavalrymen turned their sabres on the crowd, killing 11 and maiming hundreds.

In mocking reference to the Battle of Waterloo four years earlier, the massacre soon gained the name "Peterloo". The event galvanised support for parliamentary reform as well as leading to a consolidation of progressive working-class and middle-class opinion against the ruling aristocracy.

The Free Trade Hall was later built on the site of the massacre and today the place is the Edwardian Radisson Hotel. I was brought up and went to school in Manchester and gave a speech at the Free Trade Hall when I was just 17 in my capacity as School Captain at Xaverian College when I addressed the Speech Day in 1966. Later I spent lots of time as a UMIST university student studying in the Central Library located in St Peter's Square just round the corner from the site.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This month sees the 550th anniversary of Hungarian victory at the seige of the town then called Nándorfehérvár (today known as Belgrade) - an event subsequently said by Pope Callixtus III to have "decided the fate of Christendom". This anniversary - indeed the whole event - escaped me too, but it was pointed out to me by my good Hungarian friend Sándor Nagy.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 02:08 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

All war is brutal and terrible, but here is something especially bitter about civil war. This week marks the 70th anniversary of the commencement of the Spanish civil war - a three year conflict )1936-1939) in which between 300,000 and 1 million people were killed. A special feature of this war was the international involvement from the International Brigade and Soviet support on the Republican side to the backing of Fascist Germany and Italy on the Nationalist side.

Even today, this is a war which shapes Spanish society and a conflict on which there is still not open discussion and debate in Spain. I remember that, when we were on holiday in Madrid, we visted the nearby town of Toledo where there were still many reminders of the war. The Alcázar (fortified palace) was rebuilt after the successful Nationalist defence of the town in the war and it became a Nationalist shrine.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 01:01 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

What can it be? When you think about it, it can be only one thing: the photograph of 'Che' Guevara taken by Alberto 'Korda' Diaz on 5 March 1960. This afternoon, I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum in central London to see an exhibition built entirely around this image. How the picture was taken is itself an interesting story.

My wife Vee has a special affection for Guevara for a reason that you would never guess. 'Che' suffered from asthma. So did Vee's brother - and in fact he died of it when he was just 21 in the arms of their mother on her birthday.

Posted by Roger Darlington at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm fascinated by history, even though I had to stop studying it at school at the age of 15 because I had to make a choice between history and physics and my original plan was to be an engineer so I had to choose physics. To this day, though, I still enjoy watching history programmes on television and reading history books (see my reviews here).

A six-month campaign called History Matters has just opened in Britain and, at the launch of the campaign, Stephen Fry addressed the question "Why does history matter?" He gave many answers in a scintillating speech in which he asserted that: "The biggest challenge facing the great teachers and communicators of history is not to teach history itself, nor even the lessons of history, but why history matters."

Posted by Roger Darlington at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)