The men but not the luggage – and a round of golf
I have been reading more of Leo McKinstry’s Operation Sealion, and very fine it is too. I hadn’t been keeping up with McKinstry’s books, but now learn that, among several other topics, he has written...
View ArticleRobert R. Reilly on the nature of Saudi power
I am currently reading The Closing of the Muslim Mind, by Robert R. Reilly, with a view to reviewing it for Samizdata. Brilliant. For as long as I’ve been reading this book, finishing reading it has...
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Exit 60 coathangers
Today I continued with chucking stuff out, including these sixty or so coathangers, which have been accumulating in my clothes cupboard, for no reason other than they seemed like they might one day...
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The STAEDTLER Mars plastic has staying power
Recently, I bought a book on Amazon, about English as a Global Language. I’ve not read it right through yet, but it seems really good. As regulars here will know, one of the things I like to do is...
View ArticleA century by one batsman and the death of another batsman
More sport. This time in the form of a striking (literally) little passage from the preface of a book by Richard Tomlinson about the famed Victorian era cricketer W.G. Grace: By the time he was...
View ArticleStephen Davies on “the most rapid and sustained technological innovation...
I have recently been reading The Wealth Explosion by Stephen Davies. Its subtitle is “The Nature and Origins of Modernity”. I recommend it to anyone who wishes to think about why the “modernity” that...
View ArticleStephen Davies on how the New World gave the Old World food and money
For a while now, in among doing other stuff, I’ve been reading The Wealth Explosion by Stephen Davies. It’s very good. And, I just got emailed about an event at which Davies will be spaking about this...
View ArticleStephen Davies is writing a horse book
Much as I would like to replace the late Findlay Dunachie, I don’t think I’m cut out to be a book reviewer. It takes too much focus. While you’re doing it, you can’t afford to get stuck into reading...
View ArticleStephen Davies on Ruling Classes and Industrious Classes
Stephen Davies is my sort of libertarian historian in many ways, and in particular in not denying the historic importance of the predator class in times gone by. It is one thing to regret the enormous...
View ArticleStephen Davies on the eflorescences that were stopped and on the eflorescence...
I continue to struggle to find ways of communicating my enthusiasm for Stephen Davies’s new book, The Wealth Explosion: The Nature and Origins of Modernity. But I now think I know one of the reasons...
View ArticleJohn Evelyn on how the Thames froze in January 1684
You think the London weather’s cold now? (I do.) Then try reading this (as I just did), from The Mammoth Book of House If Happened (my version looks to be this one), in which John Evelyn describes “The...
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On how we love animals (except when we love how they taste)
While in France, I read the whole of The Square and the Tower, and then embarked upon The Ape that Understood the Universe. In the latter book, the matter of how humans get all sentimental about...
View ArticleSteve Stewart-Williams on how looking at other animals helps us understand...
The Nurture Only view being, in this case, the claim that all the differences in behaviour and attitude – with regard to such things as casual sex, attaching importance to physical sexual allure, and...
View Article“Every educated person in the land knew of the Eder and the Möhne dams …”
I have been reading James Holland’s book about the Dam Busters, which contains some illuminating pages concerning the history of the dams that got busted. These pages (pp. 242-247 of my paperback...
View ArticleJohn Lewis Gaddis on the failure of the Spanish Armada
Stephen Davies, seeking to explain Europe’s technological and economic breakthrough into modernity, and John Lewis Gaddis reflecting on the emergence of the USA as the world’s current superpower, both...
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Howard Goodall on the world’s first recording star
I’ve been dipping into Howard Goodall’s Big Bangs, which is a book (based on a BBC TV show), whose subtitle is “The Story of Five Discoveries That Changed Musical History”. I have started at the end,...
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Parshall and Tully (and Slim) on why Japan lost
I recently watched the 2019 movie about the Battle of Midway. Wanting to make a bit more sense of what I had just watched, I then purchased Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by...
View ArticleWhen Dowding said to Leigh-Mallory that he often couldn’t see beyond his...
I’ve just read James Holland’s account of The Battle of Britain. Holland has a very low opinion of Leigh-Mallory, who commanded 12 Group in the Battle in question, and famously tangled with Dowding and...
View ArticleTrump as Republican Party Reptile
I just did some Thoughts on Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech for Samizdata. Here is the complete speech of Trump’s that I was on about, and to which I linked, twice, because I think the fact that we all...
View ArticleEmmanuel Todd on the earthly rewards of aberrant beliefs
I’ve been reading Emmanuel Todd’s book, Lineages of Modernity. For any sort of review of this book by me, you will have to wait. But meanwhile, I did enjoy this snippet, about why people believe the...
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