Category Archives: Literature

Book Review: The Carl Hiaasen Omnibus~ Tourist Season, Double Whammy, Skin Tight

Posted on August 8, 2017 by

This omnibus edition hits our value for money target and, even better, they are an excellent read. Hiaasen satirises Florida: this is basically impossible as Florida is self-satirising. Hiaasen’s targets are politicans, developers, criminals, businessmen, tourists and the annual influx … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Stephen Leather Cold Kill

Posted on July 25, 2017 by

Cold Kill is the third Dan ‘Spider’ Shepherd novel where he imperceptibly shades from being an undercover police officer into an assassin. His journey begins when he goes undercover to penetrate a people smuggling group who turn out to be … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Philip Kerr March Violets

Posted on July 11, 2017 by

March Violets is the first in the Bernie Gunther series of novels, which are a tour de force. Bernie Gunther is a Berlin policeman caught up in the madness of Nazi Germany. The evocation of 1930s Berlin is exceptional as … Continue reading →

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Nice people don’t become Nazis: Dorothy Thompson 1941

Posted on June 6, 2017 by

Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out … Continue reading →

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Applauding Stalin: Living in a Totalitarian State

Posted on February 24, 2017 by

This extended quotation from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s book Gulag Archipelago illustrates the sheer unrelenting terror that citizens in the Soviet Union lived in during the 1930s. …………………………………….. At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. … Continue reading →

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The women of Paris during the battle of Verdun 1916*

Posted on January 24, 2017 by

As if by the germination of a tiny quantity of yeast, apparently of spontaneous generation, young women now went about all day with tall cylindrical turbans on their heads, as a contemporary of Mme Tallien’s might have done, and from … Continue reading →

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Some things never change: Ancient Rome

Posted on January 17, 2017 by

Promises will cost you nothing. Everyone’s a millionaire where promises are concerned. Hope, if only she is duly fostered, holds out a long time. She’s a deceitful goddess, but a very useful one…. The really great problem, the problem that … Continue reading →

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