David Boyle writes… Those fascinated by the events of Munich eighty years ago will be aware that there are two books out which assume rather different interpretations. On is by the novelist Robert Harris, who has made no secret of his pro-Chamberlain views. The other one is by me, and Munich 1938 puts rather greater weight on […]
Swati Singh. author of The Secret History of the Jungle Book, writes: From as long as memory serves me, I remember being a reader, a voracious reader of almost anything that I could lay my hands on. This love for reading was inculcated in a home where both my parents were continuously engaged in creative […]
This post is taken from Richard Black’s new book Denied, published today… This is the story of a coup-d’état that failed. A coup against science, against the will of peoples from the Arctic to the Equator, against nature itself. A coup attempt that, although it has failed, may have damaged the interests of future generations […]
Here’s the main point: this weekend marks the eightieth anniversary of the Munich crisis, the moment when the UK prime minister Neville Chamberlain gave away a chunk of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany – with some slightly unwilling help from the French. As it turns out, by flying to meet Hitler and Mussolini in Munich on […]
David Boyle writes: I watched the recent film Their Finest last weekend, with Bill Nighy and my favourite actress, Gemma Arterton, and very much enjoyed it. I am fascinated by the wartime media (and wrote about it in my book V for Victory). It is a romantic comedy set around a film set, as the writing team struggle […]
I went to the Social Liberal Forum conference last weekend and found it completely transformed – no more endless whingeing but real debate about big ideas for the future. They really had made the transition, as the Greens used to say, from opposition to proposition. Anyone who has read my political blogs will know is how I […]
David Boyle writes: I watched the Thorpe scandal on the BBC series A Very English Scandal with a great deal of emotion. In fact, at the end of the last programme, I found myself in tears – and I’ve been wondering why ever since. It was, of course, brilliantly directed, written and acted – and also […]
David Boyle writes… The Real Press specialises in history, but we also publish the occasional self-help or how-to-do-it guide. One of these was Fourth to First, which was part history of a Norfolk County Council election and part guide to winning using updated community politics techniques. It struck me that we should have a closer look at […]
Web diary by Simon Zec.. 1 May 2018 After months of fallowness, within two days, I’d written two more poems. All it took was to get a book published. It’s re-inspired me. And tonight, I went out to an evening organised by the bookshop and listened to other people’s poems and music and words and […]
David Boyle writes: I never went inter-railing, as so many of my friends did in the 1970s, but I have now to mark the imminent arrival of my sixtieth birthday. So I went with my children and family, and the trip included Rome, Venice and Vienna, and – my goodness – was I didactic. I’m […]
