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Gerard DeGroot

@groovydegroovy.bsky.social

279 followers 244 following 355 posts

Historian, journalist, dad, dog lover, Emeritus professor. Writes book reviews for The Times. Exile from Facebook and Twitter, still getting the hang of Bluesky. gerarddegroot.substack.com, www.begurvilla.net

Posts Replies Media

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 20/09/2025

Happy birthday Joe.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Just checking. Is anyone still on Bluesky?

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

Maybe screwing up really badly in Alaska was just a cunning plan to distract attention from the Epstein files.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

It's a relief to have Humphrey feeling better, but the special food the vet prescribed for wiggly tummies makes him fart. So I'm sitting here, reading a book, with a nice glass of white Rioja. The boys are at my feet and Humphrey is farting -- loudly and noxiously. Bliss.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Today is the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Most of the physicists who built the atomic bomb opposed its use in war. Yet they also derived immense joy from building it. Today I’ve written about their moral anguish and their efforts to stop this terrible weapon from being used.

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Eighty Years Ago Today

The moral anguish of the Manhattan Project scientists

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

In 2008, I visited Rwanda for the UN. There I met an aid worker who ran a charity for sex abuse victims. I wrote an article exposing the problem. Then the bad guys took over. The aid worker was deported and I was banned from entering the country. Because apparently there's no sex slavery in Rwanda.

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A Brief Encounter with Sex Traffickers

How I came to be banned from Rwanda

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Today's my 70th birthday. Contrary to my own expectations, I'm celebrating this milestone. I've written something quite personal about my determination to embrace life and discard the restraints I've imposed. Let the fun begin.

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Threescore and Ten

Embracing life on turning seventy

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

Today’s piece is about patriotism — the understated British kind. I was planning to ignore yesterday’s grotesque parade in Washington, but in the end I found I couldn’t do that. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there, by the way.

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For the Love of Country

Nowadays, patriotism carries dubious overtones

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

#nokings St Andrews, Scotland

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Yesterday I looked out my kitchen window toward the school playing field and saw that it was Sports Day. Yes, it’s that time of year. For me, the years seemed to roll back like a film projector in reverse and I saw my younger self running in the Parents’ Race. It was a bittersweet memory ...

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Against my better judgement, I've always entered the Parents' Race

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Where did all this evil come from, all these people willing to implement Trump's warped vision of America? My latest piece addresses this conundrum. I’m still a bit confused, but I think I now understand how a society can turn towards evil. As Goya said, 'the sleep of reason produces monsters'.

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Trump's Willing Executioners

A lesson in the cultivation of evil

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

I'm feeling nostalgic about the Biden administration. So here's a photo of Joseph Robinette Bidog, a.k.a. Joe, at nine weeks, in 2021.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Writing 8647 on a beach with shells is dumb, but harmless. Comey's tweet of it was really dumb. The administration's reaction is monumentally dumb. The whole thing reminds me of elementary school. Petty arguments, tattle tales running to the teacher. America needs to grow up. It's embarrassing.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

On Saturdays, I like to resurrect a review I once wrote of a book that delighted me. Since corruption, greed and larceny were in the news this week, I've decided to feature House of Dudley by @drjoannepaul.bsky.social It’s a fresh look at Tudor times - opulent, lively, quirky and enormously clever.

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A Tudor Crime Family

The Dudleys were the shakedown artists of King Henry's court

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

Kseniia Petrova is a brilliant researcher doing cutting edge work on Alzheimer’s and cancer. She’s currently being held in a ICE detention centre in Louisiana, charged with smuggling frog embryos into the United States. Who benefits from this idiocy? Please spread this story widely.

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A Genius, Thwarted

The case of Kseniia Petrova exposes a dangerous epidemic of anti-intellectualism

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

It’s the weekend, when I dig through my archive of reviews and look again at a book that deserves attention. This week I’m shining a light on The Ruin of All Witches by @malcolmgaskill.bsky.social. It's a riveting story of a witch scare in colonial New England, that maybe offers a lesson for today.

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If Life is Hard, Blame a Witch

Absurdity is sometimes a safe harbour

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

On VE Day, I remember my parents and the life they forged as Dutch immigrants in America, refugees from a war that could so easily have destroyed them.

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I remember Jan and Johanna, my parents

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

On Monday, Trump announced that he wants to turn Alcatraz back into a prison. He also said that he’s going to impose a 100% tariff on foreign films. The connecting link here is films. Today I discuss Reagan, some films, Jon Voight, tariffs and prisons, all linked in Trump’s febrile imagination.

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When Life Shouldn't Imitate Art

Beware of septuagenarian presidents who like films

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

On the weekends, I like to reprise an old book review that perhaps has special importance to the here and now. Today, I've selected The Gallery of Miracles and Madness, by @charlieenglish1.bsky.social For reasons that should be apparent, it brings what RFK Jr has been saying about autism to mind.

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When Madness and Modernism Collide ...

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

It’s cold here in Scotland. I should be in the garden, but instead I’ve decided to stay inside where it’s warm and write about conspicuous consumption. What happens when the ‘two doll policy’ takes hold and Americans have to learn to do without?

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Tell Me What You Want, What You Really, Really Want

In austerity, lies hope

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

Eighty years ago, Russian and American armies met on the Elbe. Germany was essentially defeated. An American, Joseph Polowsky, was among the first group to cross the river and shake hands with Soviet soldiers. That experience shaped the rest of his life. This is his little story.

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Crossing into Canaan

When two armies met on the banks of the Elbe eighty years ago

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

The best way to undermine your confidence in yourself as a caring human being is to find that the dogs' water bowl is empty. I'm a worthless piece of shit.

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

You know who won't ever play baseball or write poetry? Children who die an early, needless, death because their parents have been encouraged to be suspicious of vaccines. Those poor kids in Texas who died of measles will never pay taxes, never hold a job, never go out on a date. That’s dead certain.

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An Open Letter to Robert F. Kennedy

As the parent of an autistic child, I'm worried

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

As the father of an autistic child, I've spent the last thirty years dealing with the ignorance of people like Robert Kennedy. I therefore feel that I have the right to a good old rant. So here’s a rant.

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An Open Letter to Robert F. Kennedy

As the parent of an autistic child, I'm worried

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Trump’s Oval Office looks like an explosion in a bling factory. He flew in his gold guy from Mar-a-Lago to do the makeover. But what does all that gold mean? What about the portraits on display? In today’s piece, I unpack all the grotesquerie, desperately searching for a message within the madness.

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Washington Up, Roosevelt Down

There's a lot to learn from that atrocious decor in the Oval Office

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

It’s Saturday, when I dig through the archives for a book that made a profound impression on me. Today I’m giving another look to J. H. Elliott’s Scots and Catalans. It’s about nationalism in the two nations I love most.

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Rauxa and Seny: Passion and Good Sense

Nationalism in Scotland and Catalunya

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 16/04/2025

One hundred and twenty-two years after the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane at Kitty Hawk, Katy Perry went into space in blue lycra. How, exactly, did the experiment in aviation turn into a tawdry publicity stunt? You might find my answer surprising.

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From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

Somewhere along the road from Kitty Hawk to Cape Canaveral, America lost its way

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

It’s Saturday, when I customarily dig through my archives for a book that really impressed me. Today I’m shining well deserved light on The Silk Roads, by @peterfrankopan.bsky.social. I love it when historians think big, and there’s few books bigger than this one.

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In Search of the Omphalos

Look to the East and find a new history of the world

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 07/04/2025

We rent our house in Catalonia to holidaymakers. I've just been told that the guest who reserved 25/5 to 1/6 has to cancel because she's been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This saddens me. So I'm offering the week for £1050, all proceeds going to a pancreatic cancer charity. www.begurvilla.net

Casa Buena Vista

Stunning Holiday Villa in Begur, Catalonia

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

There's not much happiness in the world at the moment. So I figure that today would be a good day to give you a nice quirky story from the past, just to enjoy for the sake of it. No moralising lessons, just a crazy tale about eccentric Brits. And pigeons.

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Not a Good Time to be a Pigeon

One of those quirky stories about eccentric Brits -- and pigeons

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

It's Saturday, when I dig through my archives for a book that moved me. Today I'm shining some well-deserved light on River Kings by @catjarman.bsky.social It's a many-layered tale about how a 9th century bead from Gujarat ended up in Derbyshire churchyard.

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Vikings on the Volga

How a Gujarati bead ended up in a Derbyshire churchyard

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Last week,Trump announced an intention to ‘restore truth and sanity to American history’. He’s essentially saying that the practice of American history has recently been insane and untruthful. I was going to leave this one alone. For once, I was going to let the madness pass me by. But I can’t.

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Just the Facts, Ma'am

Donald Trump and the elusiveness of historical truth

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

Today I'm taking a break from the relentless bad news and instead writing in celebration of a beautiful woman who graces my life. If you don't like sentimentality, look away now.

gerarddegroot.substack.com

Mothering Sunday

On this day, I celebrate a remarkable woman

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

My review of Sinclair McKay's book about the siege of Leningrad is out today. It's an extraordinary book by an author who has a special talent for probing the personality of a city. Shocking, moving and often soul destroying.

Death, defiance and cannibalism: the 872-day siege of Leningrad

Sinclair McKay has written the ultimate chronicle of the apocalyptic Nazi siege of the city now known as St Petersburg

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

It’s Saturday, when I highlight a special book I once reviewed. Today I’m reprising my review of A Revolution Of Feeling by @rachelhewitt.bsky.social It’s a book about so many things: love, hope, education, architecture, sex, medicine, violence, frogs, laughing gas and flatulence. And feelings.

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How the last decade of the 18th century saw a revolution in feeling.

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

One of my Canadian friends pointed out the similarity between Mark Carney and Mr Rogers. Perhaps that's why Carney makes me feel optimistic.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Joe is disappointed that he was left off the group chat.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

Eight years ago, I read a book called America City, a futuristic novel about a presidential campaign in which one candidate argues in favour of annexing Canada and Greenland, in order to alleviate the effects of climate change in the United States. It seemed preposterous back then. Not anymore.

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Go North, Young Man

There's a disturbing familiarity to Trump's plans for Canada

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Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

I've been to three concerts so far this year. All of them American performers. All of them ended by saying they didn't want to go home. I see a pattern ...

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

It's Saturday, when I dig through the archives for a book that affected me. Today I reprise my review of Sinclair McKay's book about the Dresden bombing. It's a story about how wars tend to escalate beyond what is morally justified. Not for the squeamish.

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A City, Disassembled

When Dresden was destroyed -- for no clear reason

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Re the Ben and Jerry's scandal, I bought an ice cream maker. Incredibly cheap and easy. Frozen yogurt, sherbet, ice cream, whatever flavours you want. It's my little political statement. Unilever can get screwed.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Baghdad Barbie says that 67% of the court injunctions against presidential rulings this century have come against Donald Trump. She thinks that's evidence of bias. Poor thing, who's going to tell Karoline that it's probably more likely evidence that Trump does a lot of illegal shit?

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

The other day Trump released more of the Kennedy assassination files. Apparently, they do not significantly alter what the Warren Commission concluded, namely that JFK was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. Today seems an appropriate time to air my thoughts on the assassination.

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Oswald killed Kennedy, and it wasn't about Vietnam

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Today I wanted to do write about the past, like a good historian is supposed to do. For just one day I wanted to avoid mentioning Donald Trump. So I wrote about the evolution of manners. And you know what? I still ended up mentioning the Donald. Argh!

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Don't Be a Dick

Learning good manners, and forgetting them

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

The Reichstag fire in February 1933 was carefully engineered to pave the way for Hitler’s seizure of power. The Weimar constitution was supposed to prevent such an outcome but it failed. The similarities between 1933 and 2025 are disturbing. Is Trump planning a Reichstag fire?

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Burning Down the House

Hitler engineered the Reichstag fire. Trump dreams of something similar.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

On Saturdays, I dig through the archives for a book that moved me. Today I reprise a review I wrote for the Washington Post in 2015. In The Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio, Herbert Wolf recounts a scandalous story of sex and murder in a 19th century Italian convent. Fasten your seat belts; it’s a wild ride.

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?

Sex and murder in a 19th century Italian convent

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 11/03/2025

To lose one rocket, Mr Musk, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. In the wake of a second explosion of a SpaceX rocket, I examine what the future might hold for Elon Musk’s mission to Mars.

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Two SpaceX explosions suggest a worrying degree of carelessness

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

You Can’t Make this Shit Up. Hegseth’s DOD has conducted a purge of ‘DEI images’ - photos of Black, Asian, female, gay, etc. people who've served their country heroically. Also excised were photos of the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the first atom bomb. Because, you know, it’s a gay plane.

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 08/03/2025

It’s Saturday, when I dig through the archives for a book I loved. In Dictator Literature, Daniel Kalder reads and comments on the gibberish written by dictators, thus saving us from the torture of doing so. It’s a serious book, hidden inside something enormously funny. We need some laughs today.

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Daniel Kalder reads the tomes of tyrants -- so we don't have to

Gerard DeGroot @groovydegroovy.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

I’m venting my anger at JD Vance for his incredibly stupid and insensitive comment about the military potential of ‘random’ countries in Europe. Having met and worked with soldiers from many European countries, I feel saddened by the insult Vance has hurled in their direction. Now I need a drink.

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Random Insults from a Random VP

Just in case you didn't realise, JD Vance is an arse