Sarah Helm's If This is A Woman: Inside Ravensbruck: Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women is the most important and best history book I have read in a long while. It is a gruelling read full of horror and evil, redeemed in part by extraordinary acts of courage, compassion, heroism, solidarity and generosity. But it would be foolish …
Category: history
My Silence – Part 4:Kindling
Whilst I have read, or reread, many ‘real’ books in the past 20 months, the most significant development in my reading habits has been the acquisition of a Kindle. I do not intend in future to bother specifying in which format I am reading any particular book I discuss, but did want to spend some …
September Miscellany (2010)
September has been a very good month. A score of 7.07 on the Depression Scale which is the second highest ever and by far the best September. This may be partly because I am now marking more generously. It may also be partly because there is always something of a positive reaction when I emerge …
Reeves on Mill: Chapter 8
The impact on Mill of the events in Paris in February 1848 was, as was common among European radicals, immense and galvanising. 'I am hardly yet out of breath from reading and thinking about it......Nothing can possibly exceed the importance of it to the world or the immensity of the interests which are at stake …
Reeves on Mill : Chapters 6-7
Chapter 6 In the late 1830's Mill once again became heavily involved with public political events. It was a time of hope for the Radicals; hopes which were centred on achieving a split in the Whigs between the progressive element and the rest, and the introduction of the secret ballot. Mill fretted that he could …
A Woman in Berlin
This is a joint review and consideration of the book A Woman in Berlin (1954) and the film of the same name (2008), whose original German title was Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin. I saw the film much earlier this year and then by complete chance came across a first edition of the London publication of the book (1955) …
When In Rome (OP)
4th July 2007 Continuing to watch Rome, the second series, and reading a lengthy discussion on ECW about classicism, I fell to musing on these topics. The problem with the discussion was the lack of definition of 'classicism'. What do we mean by this? In the context of talking about the Eighteenth Century we use the …
Of Romans and Tudors (OP)
16th November 2007 I have written about Rome before - and no doubt will again. I have now got both series on DVD and watched it through continuously once, and a second time rather more cursorily. I know that it will become a Depression staple, like The Lord of the Rings. So it works for …
November Miscellany
Overall November has been another good month despite some bad days at the end compounded by a resurgence of back trouble. This month's miscellany is dominated by television (and quite a bit of it bad television at that!) but that is partly because I have hived off comments on other forms to separate blogs ('Three …
Scott’s Tales of a Scottish Grandfather
Walter Scott's Tales of a Scottish Grandfather takes as a paratext the idea that he is explaining Scottish history to his grandson. In fact the degree to which Scott remembers this varies - he certainly slips in the odd reference to 'your grandfather' or 'your grandfather's grandfather', but for the majority of the time it is clear that …
Moving Toyshop 