Arts
Postcard From Berlin, 1979
Back in the late 1970s, when we were both rising stars in IT in the Ministry of Defence, my friend was posted to Berlin to run the Army’s computer centre there. Being a good mate, [more…]
Soviet Union
20th Century
A Barren Shore, Part Two
An even greater slab of armour plate than the one we had stumbled across decades before, stood upright blankly showing its wounds, punched through and scored by shot, rusty red, the memorial to those Finns [more…]
20th Century
A Barren Shore, Part One
This is a personal memoir of several visits to the far north and going realisation of what had always been before my eyes, unseen and recognised. I am not an historian and certainly not of [more…]
20th Century
Hungary 1956; ‘Normalization’ in Budapest
The crushing of the 1956 Hungarian uprising led to repercussions far beyond the borders of the country itself. In its wake communist fellow travellers were forced to confront the grim realities of Soviet realpolitik, the [more…]
20th Century
Communist Flip Flops
The aspiration for this article is to enlighten some Puffins about the several about-turns the Communists were forced into before, during and after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were enemies, [more…]
20th Century
The Marshall Plan
Following on from the Morgenthau Plan, only partially and half-heartedly implemented, we come to the much better known Marshall Plan. This was named after General Marshall who at the time was the US Secretary of [more…]
Fiction
A Going Postal Christmas Carol: Miriam’s Shack
If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season; Then may also my covenant be broken with [more…]
Economics
Fiat Money and Socialism
For some time now I have been mulling over the possible causes of what seems to be an increase in the desire for socialism among the young. For someone of my generation (an early post [more…]
20th Century
Tyler Gatewood Kent
Those of you who have defied all tradition and read my ramblings about The Right Club may just remember the name Tyler Kent. He was the cipher clerk at the US Embassy who was passing [more…]