celticman's blog

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001hhfc/storyville-three-minutes-a-lengthening I’m a fan of Storyville. There have been lots of documentaries on recently to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, 27 th January. The date is chosen to mark the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. There are two stories here which wind around three minutes of film, but which takes over sixty minutes to tell. The first story...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dm3cwv/the-us-and-the-holocaust-series-1-1-the-golden-door-beginnings1938 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dm3fnf/the-us-and-the-holocaust-series-1-2-yearning-to-breathe-free-19381942 https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0dm3gdg/the-us-and-the-holocaust-series-1-3-the-homeless-tempesttossed-1942- https://dirkdeklein.net/2022/01/20/the-wannsee-conference-minutes/ https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/dreamland In one of Flannery O’Connor’s most famous short stories ‘A Good Man Is Hard To Find,’ the grandmother doesn’t want to go to Florida on vacation. This is the era of the Great Depression in America. She rattles on about this fellow that’s escaped from the State Pen, ‘The Misfit’. She doesn’t want to go anywhere with such a fellow ‘aloose’. Dreamland has Alison Wells (Margot Robbie) aloose with a $10...

I’ve seen the film, now I’ve read the book. Yeh, I know that’s the wrong order. Books are better. But I got there in the end. That gives me a pivot to spin on and talk about endings being beginnings. When you’re young, you never think you’ll get old. And when you’re old you never think about dying, until you have to. ‘Make death proud to take you.’ I’ve hung that out there. A quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar . Noodles is the man for quotes...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/bombshell A topical film in the week the moron’s moron and 45 th American President mistakes the woman he’s accused of raping as being his ex-wife. And you can’t rape your wife, right? Here we are in the sleaze pit of Fox News. Donald Trump has put himself forward as a candidate for the Presidency. Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) has primed herself to ask Trump some critical questions about his attitude towards...

I often find it easy to say what I don’t like about a book, or film or documentary. But books are my thing. And if I met Ryan O’Connor (which is highly unlikely) I’d shake his hand and tell him his debut novel is fucking great. Dan O’Connor writes about people like us. Chris Leslie (2016) Disappearing Glasgow: A Photographic Journey summed it up. ‘I always presumed the Red Road flats would last forever, but when you see it now in this state you...

In front of me is a cardboard packing from a gift. A wavy dividing line drawn in biro. Good: Rosay, Sophie, Megn. Bad: Claudia, Robin. The list was drawn up by Alfie aged seven, and Tilly, aged five (her birthday today). Rosay has just turned one and is Robin’s sister. She can’t be bad because she’s a baby. Claudia is bad because she’s Alfie’s sister. Megn, aged six, is a neighbour’s kid that runs really fast and told me she doesn’t really need...

I like to think I’m pretty good contestant at Conspiracy Theories. But any fellow conspirators, I guess, imagine the same thing. A general rule of thumb, whatever the 45 th American President believed, I believe the opposite. The great thing about fiction is you can—literally—put words into people’s mouths. In Ugly Puggly , for example, this is exactly what I think, but not so exactly that anyone would believe a real person would think this way...

I’d heard of Oskar Schindler— the clichéd read the book and seen the film—but I hadn’t heard of Resko Kasztner the Hungarian born Jew. Anna Porter tells us who he was and what he did. There are historical echoes of many of the lessons here that we’ve already forgotten. Chapter 32, begins with a quote from [United States] : ‘Rowell McClelland, Report on the Activities of the War Refugee Board from March 1944 to July 1945. ‘Dr Israel Kasztner...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00162yr ceteris paribus adverb With all other factors or things remaining the same. other things being equal ; with all other things or factors remaining the same. all other things being equal Anyone that has done O-grade economics knows what ceteris paribus means. It means nothing in the real world, because all things are not equal. Since the late nineteen-seventies, year on year, decade on decade things have...