by Gordon | Oct 28, 2012 | Culture and astronomy
As a goggle eyed robot landed on Mars in a flurry of media excitement, celebrity came to Bobak Ferdowsi who was glimpsed in the mission control room with a Mohawk haircut. In 24 hours his twitter followers increased in numbers from a couple of hundred to over 20 000....
by Gordon | Sep 25, 2012 | Alamein (people)
As we approach the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of El Alamein, we should turn to the poetry of a young soldier who fought there, Keith Douglas, for in poetry of startling verbal and rhythmic virtuosity, he moved beyond the rhetoric and the politics, beyond the...
by Gordon | Jul 23, 2012 | Alamein (politics)
On 3rd September, 1939, with all the powers invested in him by the British crown, the Viceroy of India brought India into the war against Germany. He did so without bothering to consult with any of India’s political leaders and by failing to do so lost the...
by Gordon | Jul 4, 2012 | Camels
The belly of the camel is enormous, distending out from behind the chest, most of it a giant 100 litre sack of rotting vegetation, sometimes called the rumen. The heat generated by the fermentation is so great that the rumen has to be situated immediately under the...
by Gordon | Jul 4, 2012 | Alamein (battles)
Tanks had been designed to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare and their initial deployment in Flanders had created profound shock and panic – but not victory, and the casualty rates amongst the tank-men had been high. With the end of the war, it was time to...
