Some years ago, in a minibus on the Gudbrandsdal, I spotted a memorial to what appeared to be some random Scottish solders. And later I looked it up and it turned out to be the Battle of Kringen in which some Norwegian farmers attacked, captured, and subsequently slaughtered 300 Scottish mercenaries en route to Sweden. This did not cause a ( Read more... )

When I am galactic dictator I shall have a department of my Ministry of Propaganda dedicated to the production of good romantic comedies. These romcoms won’t actually have any other political message, indeed they will even be permitted to be against me*. But what they will be absolutely required to be is well-acted, not overlong, not gross, not ( Read more... )

To be precise, in Helsinki. If I were the sort of person who obsesses about things in an organised way, I would be spending a long weekend in Helsinki this spring in order to see German vampires in Finnish, and the Finnish National Opera's original production of The Phantom of the OperaI was thinking en route to Cotswold Outdoors this morning* ( Read more... )