Covering an area of 55 football pitches and demarcated by 1,400 mature oak trees, the Hindwell Enclosure would have been an imposing monument and represented a powerful statement. Is this Welsh wonder one of Britain’s forgotten historic achievements? Is the Hindwell Enclosure Stonehenge on steroids? Despite a childhood filled with family holidays on Wales’s north coast and recent cycling trips to Pembrokeshire, I don’t know a […]
Monthly Archives: October 2012
Where does Kings Cross get its name from? Is there a cross with royal connections? And should it be called King’s Cross or Kings Cross. Kings Cross (or King’s Cross – see the end of this article) is one of London’s best known areas. Once infamous as London’s main red light district, it has gone through a period of derelict cool (derelicte?) playing host to some […]
The next train to London Battle Bridge Station
In the early 1920s, millions of people moved from either Greece to Turkey or from Turkey to Greece. Ancient communities were uprooted in a devastating campaign of mass ethnic cleansing and nation building. It is known in both Greek and Turkish as the Exchange and is almost forgotten in the rest of Europe against a early twentieth strewn with tragedy and hatred. There is a historical […]
The Exchange
If you ever felt slightly claustrophobic using a traditional BT telephone kiosk, this might be down to its unique architectural history – the design of the UK’s world famous red telephone boxes was inspired by a nineteenth century tomb. Only two graveyard memorials in London are Grade I listed – the grave of Karl Marx and Sir John Soane’s tomb. Sir John Soane’s tomb was erected […]
Calling from the grave
The red dragon against a green and white background is an unambiguous symbol of Wales. But how Welsh are these colours and how ancient is the design? I had always assumed that the Welsh Flag was an ancient design. The green and white stripes have a suitably Celtic feel and are completely alien to the vexillological tradition across the rest of the British Isles. England, Scotland, […]
The Red Dragon and the House of Tudor
The Nizaris, a deadly sect of Ismāʿīli warriors, were feared across the Middle East and beyond for their daring attacks on powerful enemies. They became known as the ḥaššāšīn or Ḥashshāshīn – a word that was modified in European languages as the Assassins. The word’s Arabic origin was, however, devised as derogatory slur to highlight a particular habit of the group. To the god-fearing, they were the notorious order of hashish-eaters. […]
The deadly vengeance of the hash eaters
Stephen Irvine, 18 October 2012 With the Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner freefalling from 120,000ft live on TV last weekend, viewers were treated to an event offering a fascinating hint of what lies beyond our world in the infinite wastelands of space, the shots of our hero preparing to jump particularly awe-inspiring. Crucially, the impact of this superb spectacle was heightened even further by the appropriateness of […]
It’s Tripe Jim, And Don’t We All Know It
French is one of the major sources of vocabulary in the English language. From the Norman invasion to nineteenth century European diplomacy, French words have percolated into English and have sometimes been swallowed whole with little or no attempt to Anglicize terms or phrases. One area of language is particularly heavily dependant on French loan words – the language of war. The impact of Norman dominance […]
The (French) language of war
The Great Depression brought misery, poverty and suffering to millions across America. Did it also bring a significant rise in life expectancy and, if so, how? People look towards the camera ravaged by abject poverty and downcast by crushed hopes. It is the Great Depression and America’s urban and rural poor are photographed for newspapers and unwittingly create some of the most iconic images of the […]
The Great Depression’s surprising silver lining
“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” – Winston Churchill to Josef Stalin Military history abounds with stories of bluff, deception and feints – lies seem to be the constant companion of military genius. Few operations, however, have been as comprehensively swaddled in so impenetrable a shroud of subterfuge as the Normandy landings of D-Day. A […]
Lies to protect the truth
Stephen Irvine, 04 October 2012 I’ll begin by asking you to step back into 1967 with me, dear readers – the year in which the police conducted a now infamous raid on Keith Richards’ Redlands estate. Picture stunned Bobbies bursting in to find members of The Rolling Stones in possession of naughty substances, and Mick Jagger in the act of eating a Mars bar out of […]