Ramblings #1 – At the Limehouse Cut

Ramblings #1 – At the Limehouse Cut

 William Morris, Eleanor Marx, George Bernard Shaw et al. gave speeches nearby  I am sitting on a wooden bench by the Limehouse Cut, the oldest canal in London, built in 1770. It is a Sunday morning, and there are only a few passers-by on Commercial Road that crosses...
We Need More Insouciance

We Need More Insouciance

Flt. Lieut. Peter Guy Scotchmer next to his damaged Typhoon after returning from an attack on an E-boat. Today, we read and hear not only about wars in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and of impending wars, but of riots and the threats of riots in many countries....
Gordon of Khartoum

Gordon of Khartoum

An overdue retrospective Major General Charles George Gordon, CB, 1833-1885 The Victorian Age was an idealistic age, beginning with the might of the Royal Navy breaking the thralldom of slavery outside the British Empire. There was a dawning acceptance of Darwin’s...
A Culture of Reticence

A Culture of Reticence

The past is another country. They do things differently there. – L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between   (A mosaic from Hadrumetum, in Tunisia, an important pre-Carthage Phoenician city, which depicts Aeneas surrounded by Clio, (history), and Melpomene (tragedy). This...
The Luring of Children

The Luring of Children

A Bookseller’s stall in Kutaisi, Georgia Now the ‘Luring of Children’ is a provocative title for an article in a non-political periodical like The Ironist. It comes from a picture, (above), that I took in Georgia (the country), recently, at a bookseller’s stall in the...
The Art Thief

The Art Thief

The Art Thief by Michael Finkel : A Book Review   This year, 2023, has seen the publication of Michael Finkel’s The Art Thief, a riveting true account of the escapades of Stephane Breitwieser, a native of Alsace, and probably the most prolific art thief in history...