The past is another country. Or is it?

Friar Barnadine: "Thou hast committed--" Barabas: "Fornication-- but that was in another country / And besides, the wench is dead."                      Christopher Marlow (The Jew of Malta) What made people like Guy  Burgess or Anthony Blunt rebel against their society, betray their  country and spy for the soviet union?  Was it a reaction against... Read more »

King George, the stammerer.

Bertie was never expected to become King.  David, his elder brother, appeared a far more charismatic leader.  People turned a blind eye to his dalliances with actresses and socialites as they had with his grandfather and nobody thought he would give up the throne for Mrs Simpson.  But he did. ... Read more »

Catherine; the tragedy for Jules, et Jim!

Catherine was one of those entrancing women, so full of life and fun, a free spirit, brave, sparky, vivacious – the kind of lively, fragile personality who lives on the edge; exciting, impulsive, passionate and very dangerous.  Like a candle in the wind, she was never going to be tied... Read more »

Because – you’re worth it!

She didn’t believe in anything very much.  Communism, fascism, altruism, capitalism, collectivism; they were all the same to her; forms of subjugation and oppression.  No, what Ayn Rand believed in was objectivism, "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life,... Read more »

White ribbons; repression and its consequences

Eichvald is a small Baronial village in northern Prussia, a patriarchal society dominated by powerful male autocrats who justified their abuse of their womenfolk and their children on the grounds that it was what they needed.  ‘This will hurt me more than it hurts you’.    It is the autumn of... Read more »

En vacances avec Monsieur Hulot

He’s one of those awkward people,  too tall and not quite coordinated.  He doesn’t so much walk as bounce along on the balls of his feet, his body held forward as if nearly falling over.  it’s like he is not of this world. He seems out of place, confused as if... Read more »

All the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby  picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been , lives in a dream, waits at the window wearing the face that she’s kept in a jar by the door.  What is it for?     All the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely... Read more »