March, 2019

Somewhere amongst my souvenirs is  A LYING LETTER  dated May 1981 from the then Managing Editor of THE TIMES, John Grant, an alumnus of Balliol College, Oxford and former Guards Officer. He died some years ago and can’t sue for libel. On 9 November 2015 in this space I posed the Question – “IS DOMINIC SANDBROOK A GREAT […]

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA Strabane got an alt-right good shout out in The Unionist Times the other week . This happened when their resident Preacherman in pole position (he who  delights  to boast about this most enlightening  stat: that  there is more Polish spoken south of the Black Sow’s Dyke than Leprechaun on Liffeyside !) identified […]

When I was in school an ultra-devout teacher explained the difference between Faith and Fact. I inferred that neither the Pope nor the most dogmatic atheist could know for certain whether there was one God, many Gods or no gods at all. I read in a booklet accompanying a DVD called IRELAND- ,from Famine to […]

I expect you know about Beto O’Rourke and the bother he’s got himself into.  Beto is one of the many candidates running for presidential nomination by the US Democrats.  He had hardly started campaigning when he had to back off, retract and repent. For why? For because he had said in a speech that his […]

Pics 1-3 are by Perkin Warbeck Pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3  (look sideways) The  Scottish play on words       Last Friday, the Ides of March, was the opening night of a Shakespearean play in the Teatru Manoel. This Maltese venue is the third oldest theatre in continuous use in Europe, having been contructed in 1732. It is to Valletta what the Abbey is to Dublin, […]

 So. That went well, didn’t it? Theresa May back yet again to Brussels, where every word she uttered drained away another pint of faith in her. Could she get her deal through Westminster? Yes of course. What would be different this time from the last two times when it was voted down by an Everest […]

You’ll remember Eric Morecambe’s defence of his rendition of Grieg’s Piano Concerto to Andre Previn’s criticism – “I am playing all the right notes, but not NECESSARILY in the right order.” I don’t know whether the sketch was first shown by the BBC, which, in 1940 when Germany was overrunning its western neighbours, signed off […]

As I watched and waited for Theresa May to come on and deliver her Big Speech last night, and as 8.00  pm  became 8.15pm, and then 8.25 pm, and even the TV presenters began to talk about the mystery of the Prime Minister’s non-appearance, I found the old Beatles’  song “She came in through the […]

“As a military governor in Ireland, Sir Humphrey Gilbert gave no quarter, and accounts of the war there talk of supplicants being made to approach him through an avenue of severed heads” writes Jeremy Paxman in “Empire”. Gilbert was a half brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, himself no slouch when it came to cruelty. I’m […]

I recently wrote about the consequences of stating uncomfortable truths, and how you could have the flesh lashed from your metaphorical bones for daring to speak one. And I instanced Mary Lou McDonald and the outrage that followed her following a banner with the slogan ‘England Get Out of Ireland’.  For my money, the banner […]