The first anti-semitic suggestion appears about three pages into the book. This same insinuation is central to the plotting of the whole narrative insofar as the eagerness of a Jewish person to acq…

1962. The Beatles’ first single release. Some people remembering this event were underwhelmed by “Love Me Do”. John Lennon’s Aunt Mimi was sniffy about it, though she was fa…

I was rather sad to read that the very wonderful Felicity Kendall has taken exception to learning that the RSC’s all female production of Julius Caesar directed by Phylida Lloyd comes with co…

On this day in 1925,  “Stooky Bill” became a sort of star of a sort of version of television. Transmitted as an image from John Logie Baird’s laboratory in Hastings, “Stooky…

The reaction to Andy Burnham’s speech yesterday got me thinking about my experience with the Irish voting system. Going PR is a bit like buying an EV – I think. It’s a bit initial…

There are lots of Nelsons.  Dublin’s Nelson fell back in 1966.  Montreal still has a Nelson, though he tends to go unnoticed.  If London’s Nelson ever falls, it will be from a great hei…

Yes, it was released OTD in 1969 – the proper “last” Beatles album.  Let It Be was released in 1970, but it was recorded (almost entirely) in early 1969 and in trying and stressfu…

I’d never seen this before. How did it take me so long to see it? Like Rope and Rear Window, this is a film that makes a very cinematic virtue out of a fixed location. Perhaps only Sydney Lum…

I’ve never seen it in the flesh (and it looks more like flesh than rock).  In my mind’s eye of course it’s made of mashed potato – its grooves painstakingly applied by Ric…

I can’t remember when I’d not heard of Augustus. The French historian Louis Sebastien Le Nain de Tillemonts declared of him in 1688: “Il suffice de remarquer ce qu’on a dit, que il ne d…

There was one thing Chesterfield made absolutely clear to his son – his “natural” i.e. illegitimate son that is.  Essentially he reiterated the point that ‘I’m not you…

Why is it so hard to imagine that life might be made better for generations yet to come? Why is it so hard to celebrate examples of how life really is better now than it was? As a child in the 1970…

Yes, I Claudius debuted OTD in 1976. I was but a child. But for some strange reason, I was allowed to watch it. “History Innit” must have been the excuse. Having rewatched the series (a…

OTD in 1975, the first episode of Fawlty Towers was first screened.   A few years ago I scribbled this – a kind of over-extended joke about paranoid conspiracy theories. This comes in chapter…

Samuel Johnson shares a birthday with Christopher Ricks.  And Russ Abbot.  That’s pretty special.  He also shares a birthday with Matthew Prior’s death day.  Matthew Prior died on Samue…

Literature, said Roland Barthes, is what gets taught – which means that eighteenth century literature is radically different from what it was when I was an undergraduate. When I was a student…

Today is the birthday of a fascinating political figure.  Here he is as a dolled-up bigwig. And here he is in “undress” wearing a turban. The bigwig denotes public status, the turban &#…

What’s the worst, the very worst thing that can happen at the official opening of a prestigious and significant infrastructural project? I would have thought the grisly death of one of the ch…

The phone is ringing, but when I try to answer I’m disconnected at once. We’re standing, as it happens, in Canada, next to the grave of our eldest child, who was taken from us in i…

There’s a slightly jarring sense that with the new season of SNL it is apparently necessary to reboot the “brewed under license” sense of branded US approval. Lorne Michaels must …

Well, Trump will be in Ireland this morning. There will be some rain, but not enough. The shameful fact that this man is not in prison will stain the pages of American history for centuries to come…

Today’s date is the date traditionally given to one of the most traumatic events in world history. This was not a catastrophe visited upon an empire in decline, but an empire at its zenith, a…

The other night we were watching coverage of the official canonisation of Charlie Kirk, and it struck me that no attempt was made all evening to cite, let alone endorse, Kirk’s actual politic…

Today in 1956, Elvis appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.  He’d had a few other high profile TV slots in the course of the year, in the course of which the nature, extent and …

People who know me at all will confirm that I have an irritating tendency to keep a civil tongue in my head.  I do like swearing, mind, in the sense that I’m keenly appreciative of it in othe…

Farage, who has shrewdly calculated that not enough people mind that he’s a crook to prevent him becoming prime minister, finally unveiled how Reform would go about governing Britain. In a wo…

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a posh hotel in Devon, choose picnics, cars, charabancs and enormous floppy hats. Choose cocktails and bridge games. Choose good …

Today in 476, the Roman Empire in the West disappeared.  Sort of.  That’s to say that the last Western Roman Emperor was deposed.  Of course, this did not make a lot of difference to people l…

You know how cinemas are very keen that you switch off your phones when you’re sat watching the latest blockbusters? The piracy of movies, we are told, “jeopardises future movie product…

My Dad of course remembered “The Day War Broke Out” quite well.  I used to hear about the occasion on a regular basis and, to this day, I flatter myself I can sustain a passable …