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Author Archives: Tobias Harper
Don’t call me Archibald!
In March 1941 the President of the Royal Society, Henry Dale, dropped in on his friend and the secretary of the Society, A.V. Hill, to hint that he was planning on recommending Hill for a knighthood. With Dale’s recommendation, such … Continue reading
Constant Lambert’s Affairs
Without being endowed with any sophisticated musical taste, I am nevertheless unusually fascinated by the lives of twentieth-century British composers and musicians. The love story between Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, for all the flaws of both men, is curiously … Continue reading
The ‘Blue Room’ – Communicating through the Medium of Miss Pearl Judd
Quite a few years ago now, I worked part-time for a few weeks for a television documentary company who needed a historical researcher for a specific project. The documentary was never made, so my research didn’t go anywhere, but the … Continue reading
Novel: Memoir: Biography
Michael Barber’s Anthony Powell: A Life Early last summer I re-read Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time. It was as entertaining as I remembered it to be and, motivated both by curiosity and the sense that they might … Continue reading
The ‘Eastern Effrontery’ of Sir Robert Ho Tung
People give away money voluntarily for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they do it publicly, and sometimes they follow the advice that Jesus Christ is reputed to have given to always give secretly and discretely. I have always liked that … Continue reading
Daughter of Stalingrad – Evgenia Arefievna Pusireva and the Arctic Ocean
Evelyn Waugh sarcastically named his ‘Sword of Honour’ trilogy after the ‘Sword of Stalingrad’ that was given to the people of that city as a decoration for their endurance during the Second World War. The main character, Guy Crouchback, like … Continue reading
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Tagged battle of the Atlantic, Evgenia Pusireva, honours system
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The Perils of a National Church: A.C. Tait and St Paul’s Cathedral
Regardless of whom you agree with in present debates about whether or not to participate in the eviction of protestors around St Paul’s Cathedral in London, what this controversy shows is how difficult it is for the modern Anglican church … Continue reading
Piano in the Jungle: Len Edwards and Burma
In 2000, Dame Vera Lynn was awarded the ‘Spirit of the Twentieth Century’ prize in a poll to pick the Briton who best exemplified this ‘spirit’. This seems like more of a compliment to Britain than it does to Vera … Continue reading
The Chatterley Trial and Anthony Powell
Undergraduate classes and general histories of modern Britain invariably quote Philip Larkin’s famous lines: ‘Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixy-three/Between the end of the Chatterley ban/And the Beatles’ first LP’. The trial over whether Lady Chatterley’s Lover was fit reading for … Continue reading
Defending the Honour of the Honours – Ernest Loftus
I’ve already written about J. Brixley and his OBE woes, but made the mistake of saying that the person who dobbed Brixley in was anonymous. In fact, two men wrote in to the Home Office reporting Brixley. They were Norman … Continue reading
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Tagged Ernest Loftus, honours system, Order of the British Empire
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