This week the Sunday Times’s economics editor, David Smith, recorded a fascinating piece for BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House. It is called “If Britain were Greece …”, and imagines the UK under the same financial, economic and social strains currently affecting Greece. The resulting piece is an economic “It Happened Here”, and it paints a bleak and sobering picture. In this nightmarish alternative Britain, unemployment has topped 7 […]
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Tomorrow is a leap day, the spare day that comes (almost) every four years to ensure our calendars are correct. Newspapers and blogs are awash with ‘leap day’ facts today. I was in two minds as to whether to acknowledge this quadrennial event or ignore it (given the blanket alternative coverage). In the end I decided to present a selection of my favourite leap day facts. […]
Leaping into the unknown
With temperatures in my dungeon hitting unacceptable levels of chilly in recent weeks, you’d think it would be with great joy that I awoke to see the sun this fine morning. But this wasn’t the sort to warm your cockles after the deep freeze of a long winter. Oh no. This was the sort to have you plunging straight back down into the darkness, embracing the […]
Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me
Peter the Great is a towering figure in Russian history, arguably deserving of his soubriquet from successes at war, political and social reforms and the successful founding of St. Petersburg, throwing open Russia’s window onto Europe. As a particularly effective Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, Peter was a dominant and imposing force for over 40 years. Using adjectives such as ‘great’, ‘towering’, ‘imposing’ and […]
Peter the (quite literally) great
I was writing up my weekly blog on employment law (don’t all rush at once to ask for a copy) when I came across a statement that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills was taking urgent steps to radically reduce red tape. As a phrase ‘red tape’ very effectively and concisely conveys a distinctly visual message. If the machinery of government is bunged up with […]
Tangled etymology
In the ninth century AD, Kieven Rus’ was a pagan state with no official religion. Its ruler, Prince Vladimir, reigned for almost twenty years as a devout follower of Perun – the most important god in the Slavic pagan pantheon. The Primary Chronicle, a glorious weave of mythology, legend and history, tells the story of how Christianity came to Russia. This record, sometimes translated with more […]
Christianity comes to Russia
“A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse! Alarum. Enter KING RICHARD III and RICHMOND; they fight. KING RICHARD III is slain.” – Richard III, William Shakespeare Richard III was slain during the battle of Bosworth Field. He became the last king of England to be killed in battle but was not the only one to suffer this brutal fate. King Harold was slain whilst […]
Battlefield regicide
This week, Stephen Irvine had a night in front of the telly … Like a cold-hearted, moustachioed screw bundling a terrified lad out of the minivan, through the drizzle-soaked grounds of the borstal, up the concrete steps and into his new abode, the cold hand of time is about to shove me further into my 30’s any day now. An impending birthday is as good a moment […]
The Future’s Dark. The Future’s Orange
It seems strange to think that the historic heart of Russia was once Kiev, a city that is now the capital of an independent Ukraine. The Rus’ people had pushed south from their heartlands in Novgorod to reach Kiev in the ninth century. Kievan Rus’ became the centre of a golden age for Russia. Given the central role of Kiev in Russian history, the etymology of […]
Living on the edge
It was a bright summer’s day in Kent as the Folkestone Boat Express thundered towards London. The Express, an integral part of the iron link between London and Paris, had reached England on the afternoon of 9 June 1865 and had cleared the South Downs, a little over 45 miles from its destination. The train sped through Staplehurst at 50 mph and was crossing the iron […]
Charles Dickens’s near death experience
It was the largest empire that ever existed – a vast streak of imperial pink across every inhabited continent. It was the empire on which the sun never set, covered a quarter of the world’s total land area and was home to a fifth of the world’s population. But when was the British Empire at its biggest? The map below shows all of the areas that […]
The pinkest map of all
On 30 January 1943 Friedrich Paulus was promoted to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall. On the very next day, this freshly minted field marshal did something no German field marshal had ever done before: he surrendered. Just one year earlier things were very different for the Germans. In January 1942, Paulus was promoted to the rank of general and commander of the German Sixth Army. In this […]
Stalling for surrender at Stalinburg
In the first of what will hopefully be a regular feature, Stephen Irvine tells us why he has a problem with the funerary hoopla for Whitney Houston. It is nothing personal, mind … Coverage of Whitney Houston’s funeral has been more than a little troubling today, with the BBC’s online “News” particularly guilty. Underneath stories about a potential Cold War with Iran and a mental-looking bloke […]
Houston, I have a problem
New York may be the unofficial capital of the world, but it doesn’t have the highest living costs to match. In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Worldwide Cost of Living Survey New York is only the 47th most expensive place to live out of 131 cities. This year’s priciest place is Zurich, largely thanks to the rising strength of the Swiss Franc. The Swiss financial centre […]
Are Zurich? If not, live somewhere else
The flag of the United States of America is so instantly recognisable and ubiquitous that it is hard to believe its design was only formalised in 1912. On the 24th June 1912, President Taft signed Executive Order 1556 stipulating the correct proportions of the flag and specifying the proper arrangement and orientation of the stars. Until then, the basic design was well known – there were […]
Fixing the shape of the Stars and Stripes
Earlier this week I highlighted Claire Tomalin’s excellent biography of Charles Dickens. I have been pleasantly surprised by the numerous revelations of surprising idiosyncrasies and quirks that make him a particularly fascinating subject. One of the most surprising facts is that Dickens was a passionate believer in mesmerism (sometimes referred to as magnetism). He even went so far as to practice this unconventional form of medical […]
The magnetic Mr Dickens
In a year that is crowded with major anniversaries and major events, the bicentennial of Charles Dickens’s birth looms large. The BBC has been awash with documentaries, adaptations and readings and exhibitions on the great man are being staged across London, Portsmouth and Rochester. My own ‘tribute’ has been to read Charles Dickens: A Life by Claire Tomalin. It is a cracking biography, and provides a fascinating […]
Like maggots in nuts – Dickens in the Inn
I was at a talk this morning on Australian labour practices. As my day job involves employment law, this was not as random as might seem. The speaker was rattling through some of the key differences between UK and Australian employment law and noted that the minimum wage in Australia was AU$15.51 per hour. In the UK the national minimum wage rate currently stands at £6.08 […]