The long (and accident prone) road to motor regulation
I thought that we might take a break from 19th century history this week and look at something from around a hundred years ago. My wife, Tammy Goriely, has been doing some work on the regulation of self-driving cars and this has inspired her to look at how driving was...
Closing my ‘Journal of the Covid Years (for now at least)
There was no ‘Journal of the Covid Years’ this week – the first week since February that it hasn’t appeared. The diaries covered February 2020, when the word “coronavirus” first entered our consciousness to July 2020, when we could finally go to a café and get our...
Journal of the Covid Years: Independence Day
'Independence Day', when we could finally go to a café or a hairdresser, was on 4 July, so, strictly speaking, I should have posted this extract last week. But it was such a big thing at the time that I felt it needed its own space. Saturday 4 July 2020 This is...
Politics and fantasy: can you tell the difference?
I’m not a big one for preparing my Friday blog posts ages in advance. I generally prefer to see what I can think of to write on the day or (as now) the day before. This week I really wasn’t sure what to talk about. There seemed to be quite a lot going on in the world...
Journal of the Covid years: a new start
Another short entry this week as we visit my beloved's journal entries from two years back. Next week's will be a long one -- marking 'Independence Day' a little late. It will also be the last of these regular posts. After Independence Day there was too much going on,...
Burke vs Sharpe! (Book review)
Sharpe’s Assassin is presented as a story about Sharpe freeing a spy from a fortress and then hunting down some rogue Bonapartists who would assassinate the victorious Duke of Wellington. It has enough similarities to Burke and the Pimpernel Affair (freeing a spy from...
Journal of the Covid years: a quiet anniversary
Here's the latest instalment of my beloved's covid diaries. We've both been pleasantly surprised at the positive comments we've had about them, but we won't be able to keep up the weekly posts much longer. As life opened up, there was more going on and keeping the...
The British Invasion of Buenos Aires, 1806
On 27 June 1806 Buenos Aires fell to the British. It's one of the least well-known campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars but the first of the James Burke books, Burke in the Land of Silver, centres on the run-up to this battle (not that there was really a battle) and its...
Journal of the covid years: our first social gathering
June 2020 and it's been over three months since we've seen our friends who we would usually see every week. With restrictions on outdoor gatherings lifting, we could finally meet up. We were excited. Sunday 22 June 2020 The event of the month - the summer solstice...
Could I present this blog post as interpretative dance? Should I even try?
An extra post today because I loved last night's performance of The Car Man so much and its run at the Albert Hall ends of Sunday and I want people to go and see it. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This week I've been...