20th Century
A History of Pop Music – Albums 1963
Featured Album: Please Please Me – The Beatles This is a series of articles looking at albums from 1960 to whatever year we end up in. I will select a featured album for each year [more…]
History
20th Century
So…What’s Going Postal good for? (Part 1)
Recently I received out of the blue an email, (forwarded by the inimitable AWS) from a fulminating Frenchman. He’d come across an article of mine on GP from 2022 – The Family at War four parter [more…]
20th Century
‘The Promised Land,’ by Anon
Before the invention of social media, people in workplaces found ways to share humour, satire, and political commentary through handwritten or copied notes circulating informally among colleagues. Employees might create cartoons or sarcastic messages poking [more…]
Arts
When We Was Fab – That Annual Cricket Dinner
The cricket club I played for in Oz was part of a much larger sporting society. Netball, football, tennis, hockey and Aussie rules were all part of this rich tapestry. The cricket section was managed [more…]
Arts
Tin Foil Hat – Part 2
The question is what is in the tablets retrieved from Sumer and can the data be trusted. When watching videos on YouTube we must bear in mind that the creators want to make money from [more…]
19th Century
The Scrapbook of Sherlock Holmes, 5/6: The Wolf Man of Mayfair. Part 1 of 2
It was a sunny spring morning, and even amid the noise from busy Baker Street the open window admitted the song of a blackbird. Holmes laid down the News Chronicle to address himself to a [more…]
Business
A Plutocrats’ Tour of The North
For generations, the phrase “grim up north” has lingered in the national imagination — conjuring images of soot-stained skylines, struggling towns, and industries long past their prime. It is a shorthand that flattens the region [more…]
18th Century
George Stephenson: The Father of the Railways
He couldn’t read his own name until he was 18. Then he built the technology that shrank the planet. George Stephenson was born in a two-room cottage in Wylam, Northumberland, on 9 June 1781. There [more…]
Arts
When We Was Fab – 21st Birthday Parties
For my parents generation 21 was the passing into adulthood ( key to the door and all that). Never mind that half of them were married and had kids by then it was a significant [more…]