Northcote Corner…Quiet Please.
"Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.”
In a previous post I described how, at the age of about eight, the Tintin books arrived in my world thanks to the small collection in Mr Kennick’s classroom. Actually, on reflection, I was probably aware of the characters earlier thanks to the Belvision episodes of ‘Hergé’s Adventures of TinTin’ which first aired on the... Continue Reading →
Writing that title, I immediately heard the iconic voice from the "Belvision" animated series of the 1960's, which I suppose was my first awareness of the character. But my first real encounter with Hergé's creations came at Junior school, or "Primary" as it would now be called. I was 8 years old, and I can... Continue Reading →
In part 1, I talked about the type of men who were attracted to the KL; why they joined, and how they became inculcated and inured to the violence. How they soon became willing cogs in the machine. Here, I’d like to examine the context in which the machine grew, and the motivations which enabled... Continue Reading →
‘may the world at least behold a drop, a fraction of this tragic world in which we lived.’ (Salutation by Chaim Zalman Gradowski, Auschwitz 1943) When I first encountered Nikolaus Wachsman’s book ‘KL - A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps’, I half-expected an account of the Holocaust in the vein of so many others.... Continue Reading →
My post ‘1938 - The World Turns’ discussed some of the issues of Neville Chamberlain and the British Government's policy of appeasement towards European dictators in the 1930's, particularly Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. I portrayed Chamberlain as a somewhat misdirected figure, arrogant and naive in his belief that war could be avoided by meeting Hitler's... Continue Reading →
I mentioned in ‘and about me’ how Shirer's book gave me a sense of the breadth of the Second World War as a subject for study; of how I came to understand that it had roots way before the shameful carving-up of Poland between Hitler and Stalin. In the years preceding that infamous act, another,... Continue Reading →
Postman’s Park - a place for reflection... Just by way of a change, today's tale is not about war, social upheaval, or the incredible changes which characterised the twentieth century. Because today I took delivery of a book about a little-known corner of London's social history - Postman's Park, in the City of London; and... Continue Reading →
Northcote Corner...Quiet Please. 