Bits and Pieces

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Three Cities, three Airbnb’s

Florence first. In the footsteps of Dante, of Michelangelo, of Botticelli, of the Duma and of David, of the Medici, the Ponte Vecchio, stepping back into the Renaissance. A city of alleyways and…

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The M&S Wimereux French Biscuits Tin and the Great War

I am rather partial to a good tin. I collect the things, hoard them, they are all over the house. Tins full of sixpenny pieces, tins of threepenny bits, half-crowns, buttons, old stamps, Large tins…

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50 Yards of Florence;

The medieval lanes and streets and alleys provide welcome breaks of shade from the heat and the sun, and occasionally from the crocodile lines of tourist groups faithfully following their guides. …

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An Intelligence Index Card from the Irish War of Independance

Is this index card taken from a British Intelligence file during the war of Independence? Is it the real thing? We have an ordinary index card, 6 inches by 4 inches, brown and fragile with age, a r…

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A Duty to Execute.

A. A. Dickson Captain, 2/7th Battalion, The Sherwood Foresters ‘A Duty to Execute’, ( This is Captain Arthur Annan Dickson of the Sherwood Foresters Regiment. It is the only known photo…

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Joesph Bueys, ex Messerschmidt pilot turned rather Loony professor of Art and acclaimed conceptual/performance artist, collected leftist radicals as bees collect pollen. He thrived on their fresh b…

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A Riotous time in Belfast – 1970 (clic on the photographs to enlarge the image)

Unity Flats was the rather ironic name given to a brutal 60’s style complex of catholic apartments, planted, more in hope than expectation, at a junction close to the protestant Shankill Road. By t…

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Notes on a lecture – “High Treason” The background to the Casement painting by John Lavery

Please note these are lecture notes designed for an illustrated lecture. Not all the images used in the lecture are included in the notes and therefore the prose may appear a bit clunky at times. …

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Kuching. Purely upon the basis of my exemplary war service with the fabled Laundry and Bath Unit, I was singled out for advanced training as a cinema projectionist with the AKC, which I think means…

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One of the great purposes of this book, all eight hundred and ninety six pages of its slightly smaller than breeze block size, is to fall, with all its ponderous weight, upon the poorly sourced, id…

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Viersen. It must have been a small agricultural village at one time. Set in vast acres of open fields of sugar beet and potatoes which ran all the way to the Dutch boarder. It became a satellite vi…

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Further ephemeral treasures from my archive shoebox. This being a check list of the NUPE officers strike levy collected for the Nottinghamshire Miners during the 1984 strike. The levy, £23.00 a …

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Borneo – a clean war?

Three years of tough and intensive military training. Hard bitten drill sergeants and skilled combat veterans turning boys of 15 and 16 into trained killers, before sending them off into the far-…

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Jimmy Carr at the Edinburgh Festival

British comedy has never before, been this desperate: “Your boyfriend asked you to piss on him? Ha ha ha ha guffaw guffaw Did you like it? Ha Ha Ha Ha guffaw Ha Ha: He shows a slide of a dr…

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Artistic approaches to the Forth Railway Bridge

There must be in excess of a thousand images painted of the Forth rail bridge. And why not, for there are few more inspiring and powerful examples of Victorian engineering achievement. A great do…

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Gibraltar. There was an old Sherman tank to the rear of our crumbling block of flats. It served as the centre piece of a children’s play area. It was wonderful. Of course the tank’s open hatc…

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When I were a lad in Gibraltar….

When I were but a lad in Gibraltar the RAF had a squadron of Shackleton bombers. Quite big beasts that resembled the old Lancaster bombers of WWII and which had a deep throaty roar as they flew ove…