Tag Archives: 1930s

Institutional sadism at Repton School 1930s

Posted on November 17, 2022 by odeboyz

“Michael [Dahl’s friend] was ordered to take down his trousers and kneel on the headmaster’s sofa with the top half of his body hanging over one end of the sofa. The great man then gave him one terrific crack. After … Continue reading →

Posted in education, Health, Religion, School | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Book Review: William Ryan ~ The Holy Thief (2010)

Posted on May 30, 2022 by odeboyz

The death of Phillip Kerr left a hole in my reading of historical novels. His principal character, Bernie Gunther,1 a Berlin policeman becomes embedded in the Nazi regime whilst maintaining his integrity (sort of). Ryan’s Moscow Noir novels are set … Continue reading →

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Book Review: Tim Bouverie ~ Appeasing Hitler: Chamberlain, Churchill and the Road to War (2019)

Posted on December 13, 2021 by odeboyz

This is a ground breaking account of the 1930s. It’s meticulous history. The front cover ‘blurb’ quotes Antony Beevor saying, “An astonishing debut.’ and Beevor is one of the Britain’s greatest historians. Great history writing is literature. Bouverie welds his … Continue reading →

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Stalin’s Catch 22: the starvation of the Ukraine 1932-3

Posted on October 10, 2017 by odeboyz

“Stalin never wrote down, or never preserved, any document ordering famine. But in practice [he] forced Ukrainian peasants to make a fatal choice. They could give up their grain reserves and die of starvation, or they could keep some grain … Continue reading →

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Applauding Stalin: Living in a Totalitarian State

Posted on February 24, 2017 by odeboyz

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 →

Posted in History, Literature, Politics | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments