The Bell Inn
The Bell Inn is to be found in pretty, popular Lyndhurst in the New Forest, with its bustling shops and restaurants; an extremely suitable establishment for a lunch or dinner after a day exploring the paths, woodlands and meadows of the New Forest and admiring its flora and bold and abundant fauna. We were fascinated to discover that the inn has been in the same family for over 250 years, Continue reading
Berlin 1945
Blick über den Pariser Platz auf das Brandenburger Tor Anfang Juni 1945
David M. Glantz and Jonathan M. House, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler, Revised and Expanded edition, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, 2015, Appendices, Index, Maps, Tables, Bibliography, pp. xv + pp.557, ISBN 978-0-7006–2121-7
When Titans Clashed was first published in 1995, and the authors, as they note, benefitted from the first wave of the declassified release of archival material resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Such, meanwhile, has been the accumulation of monographs on the war and the release of new archival material that the authors considered it necessary to update the 1995 publication.
The title itself raises two problems: in terms of manpower and matériel the Soviet Union was indeed a TITAN, Germany was a titan; nor did the Red Army stop Hitler.
True, Soviet losses in dead, wounded and devastation went way beyond anything endured by Britain and the United States but without the Anglo-American Alliance the Soviet Union alone would not have stopped Hitler. I wonder whether Hitler, towards the end of the war when Germany was facing defeat, looked back at the summer of 1940 and realised that the failure to have captured or to have destroyed the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) at Dunkirk, within his grasp, was the moment when Germany lost the war. Churchill politically could have survived the capture or the destruction of the BEF. He would have been replaced and his successor would have concluded a deal with Hitler. Continue reading
Michelle Fields Incident
In the 1990s, broadcaster Charles Sykes wrote an important book called “A Nation Of Victims: The Decay of the American Character.”
Fast forward to 2016, and Mr. Sykes is defending a character on grounds he once rejected in his trailblazing book.
When Mr. Sykes lamented the “The Decay of the American Character,” no reader was under the impression it was the mettle of reporter Michelle Fields he was hankering for and hoping to see restored.
I’ve watched the grainy footage that has fueled the hysterics of Ms. Fields and her shameful sisterhood, housebroken males included. The whole world has watched. Continue reading
John Stuart Mill, by G F Watts
On the campaign stump, Donald Trump’s visceral answer to manufacturing decline has been called a self-defeating return to the processes of primitive economics. But Trump’s route to powering America’s revival does lead through a mill — John Stuart Mill.
Trump’s economic prescription to ‘Make America Great Again’ by imposing tariff walls to foreign trade has been lampooned by mainstream economists as equating the Great Depression hysteria that gave rise to the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, which saw affected nations impose retaliatory trade restrictions. Continue reading
Polish Canadians
This essay is partially based on my article,“Is there a distinctive English-language Polish-Canadian writing?: In search of a fragmentary tradition.” Strumien: Rocznik Tworczosci Polskiej w Zachodniej Kanadzie) (Stream: an annual of Polish creative endeavour in Western Canada) no 8 (2012), pp. 18-24 strumien.ca That article was based on a draft of an English-language presentation read at the 19th Annual Conference of the Polish Association for the Study of English (PASE) — Crossing frontiers, staking out new territories (Kalisz, Poland: Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan – Kalisz Campus), April 19-21, 2010.
Canada today is officially and juridically a multicultural society. This means, among other things, that the distinctive cultures of various diasporas are – at least in theory — encouraged, and, to a greater or lesser extent, supported by Canadian federal, provincial, and major-municipal governments. At the same time, the so-called main Canadian culture also receives extensive support from all levels of Canadian government. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), Canadian book publishers, Canadian magazine publishers, and many individual authors, are subsidised — especially by the federal government. There are also vast subsidies given to various kinds of Aboriginal cultural endeavours. Continue reading
Enoch Powell by Allan Warren
From 1991-92, a major ideological battle was fought in Britain, the reverberations of which are still pulsing through our political life. That magus of British statesmanship and identity, Enoch Powell – who emerged from retirement to engage in that confrontation – was in no doubt as to its significance; arguing (as he had done during Britain’s 1972 accession to the then Common Market, and at the time of the Single European Act, 1986) that our Kingdom faced a challenge to its existence, every bit as dangerous as the threat before us in the dark days of 1940. Continue reading
Elizabeth Forster-Nietzsche and Friedrich Nietzsche
Was Friedrich Nietzsche anti-Semitic? In Nietzsche’s Jewish Problem, Robert C Holub shows that resolving this question requires painstaking analysis of his thought, both published and unpublished, likewise of his correspondence. It also demands an understanding of the milieu in which he lived and of how conceptions of anti-Semitism have changed over time. In this context, The Socialism of Fools?, by William I Brustein and Louisa Roberts, provides invaluable material. Continue reading
Camellias, by Alan Douglas Baker
During the orchestral overture, we see Violetta Valéry (Nicole Cabell) through a translucent curtain, wearing an exquisite white dress. The stage is still ill lit at this juncture and Violetta appears to be unwell. A daguerreotype image of a waif like child is projected onto a screen, perhaps to suggest that the heroine, a notorious courtesan, has only escaped from an obscure and poverty-stricken childhood by exploiting her female charms. On grounds of propriety we will pass over the origin of Dumas fils’ title La Dame aux camellias, the novel and play upon which La Traviata is based. Suffice it to say that red often represents blood and white, purity. (In an imaginative production of La Traviata at the Salzburg Music Festival in 2005, conducted by Carlo Rizzi, red and white sofas stood in for red and white camellias). Continue reading
US Supreme Court Building
The theory in vogue with conservative pundits right now is that Barack Obama doesn’t even want the Republican-controlled House to confirm Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court. The President is bluffing, they say. By nominating a moderate judge with full knowledge that Republicans will block him, he’s leaving the seat available for Hillary Clinton to appoint a more progressive judge; in the meantime, Democratic senators like Chuck Schumer can tether the GOP leadership to Donald Trump and his “extremism”. Continue reading
Trump vs. the Banana Republicans
Trump vs. the Banana Republicans
Ilana Mercer draws a distinction
There’s a difference between (small r) republican principles and the Republican Party’s rules of procedure. But National Review neoconservative Jonah Goldberg doesn’t see it.
Or, maybe Goldberg is using America’s founding, governing principles to piggyback the Republican Party’s oft revised and rigged rules to respectability.
Conservatives who harbor the quaint expectation that voters, not party operatives, would choose the nominee stand accused by Goldberg Continue reading →
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