(by Umberto Eco). Umberto Eco may have been a gift from God (Ex Caelis Oblatus) but this novel is not divinely inspired. Yambo (Giambattista Bodoni), the narrator, is fog-bound. Following an ‘incident’ (a stroke?), he loses his episodic memory. His doctor explains, “It’s episodic memory that establishes a link between who we are today and who we have been, and without it, when we say ‘I’, we’re referring only to what we’re feeling now, not to what we felt before, which gets lost, as you say, in the fog.” This concept is applied rather loosely by Eco in the service of allowing Yambo, now in his sixties, to…
Continue Reading →'Non preoccuparti, we left Winston in the car.' (Chamberlain, Mussolini, Lord Halifax & Count Ciano at Rome Opera, Jan. 1939)
(C J Sansom) Smog, smog smog. There is a lot of smog in this novel, which serves to hide the holes in this rather unlikely plot. But it’s an ok read if you believe in “holiday” books. World War I is known only as The Great War because there was no World War II. Halifax succeeded Chamberlain. England surrendered and Churchill is now an underground resistance leader. How differently things actually turned out! It’s all very well until the erstwhile surprisingly amiable and hands-off Nazis turn a bit nasty and start to disappear people. Importantly however, Germany’s most effective means of domination is to control Europe with finance rather than jackboots. How…
Continue Reading →Hitler promised a chicken in every pot and a VW in every garage but failed to add that soon there would be no pots or garages...(Photo c/- German Federal Archives)
This review comes from our Guest Reviewers – thank you Denise and Margaret! Guest reviews are always welcome. “Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany”. (The Fringe, Rymill Park, Adelaide, 19 February 2015) Denise writes: A stellar performance by Ingrid Garner, adapted from her grandmother’s autobiography. Performed on a small set all but bare of props, and with some intermittent sound effects and voice-overs to enhance the sounds of conflict, this young actress drew us deeper and deeper into the daily business of survival in a foreign country at war. She showed us how a family unit can remain strong…
Continue Reading →Peerless self-confidence
(30 Nov. 1874 to 25 Jan. 1965) The 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death prompts us to recall a person the like of which we no longer see. Whilst he was a giant even from early age, Churchill was wildly inconsistent in his politics and his professional allegiances. He failed more often than he succeeded and a case can be made that he was a far better writer (and painter) than politician or military strategist. Yet he completely embodies the heroic myth of ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man’. Hard as it is to believe today, for a great deal of…
Continue Reading →(Dir. Morten Tyldum) (2014) There have been many books and indeed many films concerning Enigma and Ultra. All are unsatisfactory to varying degrees. The present effusion suffers from a common defect. It is hard to engage us, in cinematic terms, by presenting decryption, or its value in the war effort: one is visually dull, the other incalculable. One is left to stage moral dilemmas or descend to caricatures of hobbits in Bletchley huts, sledgehammering us with reminders that queer little folk can do great things. Turing and his colleagues in Hut 8 were crucial to the effort to break the…
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