One of the best loved stories of recent years is Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman with its music by Howard Blake. In case you are not familiar with the story (and surely everyone has heard the main theme tune Walking in the Air) it concerns a little boy who makes a snowman one day. Unable to sleep… Read More »
The party season is upon us already. Having concluded a week of festivities celebrating my birthday recently and fresh, if that is the right word in the circumstances, from the Millnet 15th birthday party at the top of the Millbank Tower with fireworks courtesy of the Mayor of London (thanks Boris!), my thoughts are increasingly… Read More »
What have the following in common? A 1987 album track by George Harrison A song by Bryan Adams A 1969 album by the Temptations Battlestar Galactica A mobile phone company based in the Isle of Man A crime novel by James M Cain A skyscraper and shopping mall in Shanghai The answer is that all… Read More »
Lawyers are used to logical thinking and reasoning. After all, most of them will know the duck test: if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Conclusions are reached by a process of inductive reasoning. Don’t go away! I promise this piece… Read More »
Former Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, once quipped that a week was a long time in politics. After a string of events which were calculated to make a lesser man blanch, Wilson was phlegmatic. He had spent most of his life climbing the greasy pole which is politics and he obviously felt that he needed to… Read More »
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is a concept with which most people are familiar, even if they do not know its origin. The concept appears in the Old Testament, the Koran and the Talmud and probably elsewhere as well. It is even referred to by Jesus in the Sermon… Read More »
Did you see the 2004 film “Head in the Clouds“? I did not! But if you had you would know that the protagonists face unpalatable choices in 1930s Europe. In fact I had never heard of it until told about it by a lunch companion last week who raved about it. Whether it is any… Read More »
Son of Sweyn Forkbeard and of Swietoslava (or possibly Gunhilda also known as Sigrid the Haughty) the daughter of Mieszko 1 of Poland, grandson of Harold Bluetooth and great grandson of King Gorm (the first historically recognised King of Denmark) and more famed for the story that he once tried to command the advancing waves… Read More »
Even if you are too young to remember the exploits of Dan Dare in the boys’ comic The Eagle which brightened up my week when I was a boy at school arriving, as it did, in a special wrapper for all to see, I suspect that you will be familiar with the name Dan Dare… Read More »
With summer coming to an end (although the recent weather over the Bank Holiday suggests this has already happened) we can look forward with keen anticipation to what the autumn and the first half of 2011 will bring. Incidentally, why do we all still have to suffer bank holidays? Given to bank workers in the… Read More »