Random Views

Normally, I wouldn’t bother to write about a mediocre book, but this is a rather special mediocre book. Not much of a spy novel... It’s...

Travel, they say, broadens the mind. I suppose it does that because it exposes you to different experiences. And to different people. For ...

When I last wrote about my mother, Leatrice, I mentioned the strange circumstance that my parents’ wedding took place in Genoa. Nothing s...

It’s far from inappropriate that the anniversary on 3 January passed quietly. It was the anniversary of a quiet man. A modest man, a shy man...

Ah, the pride and joy of Britain as a great power Putting down the Kenya Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s Normally I don’t get into debates...

An old friend of mine was an intensive care specialist at a prestigious hospital. He told me of a case he once had to deal with, of a wealth...

Though he was a son of the emperor, the young prince Ashoka was far from the line of succession. But he was respectful of the Ministers so, ...

Thirty years ago today, on 3 December 1984, the people of Bhopal in Central India woke up to the realisation that their city had been the v...

Richard Lederer, in his Anguished English , quotes a student who believed that the sun never set on the British Empire because the Empire wa...

One hundred years ago today, on Friday 3 July 1914, Martin could breathe a sigh of relief: the insufferably hot weather was goin...