I don’t think anyone since Shakespeare has contributed quite as many sayings and allusions to the English language as Orwell.   And the most remarkable thing is that most of them come from only two relatively short books.  Orwell was not a prolific writer and he died at a much earlier age than most of

The wide waters of the Rhine separated the rich and peaceful provinces of Gaul from the violent barbarians of Germany.  But it was no barrier.  The warlike tribes were only prevented from helping themselves to the property of the empire’s inhabitants by the Roman army.  The frontier was tough to defend and during the reign

  The biggest problem with studying history is remembering that the people taking part in it didn’t know what was going to happen next.  And there is another problem as well – they often didn’t know accurately what had happened before either.  People’s motivations are often therefore hard to fathom.  And the existence of conspiracy

I have become a bit embarrassed by the amount of interest my post about the trial of Galileo has generated.  It was a very quick and not particularly thought out piece that I just knocked out in half an hour or so in response to a Pious Fabrication’s video.   But it has been the most read

  Have you ever had two tabs open on your browser and found an unexpected connection between the pages?  Here’s a thing. Is there something relating these two?  In one there is a story about conservative Anglicans in London who have come up with a great wheeze.  They have set up an organisation called the Southwark

Soviet communism was a failure.  In particular, it failed by the most basic of measures.  You wouldn’t want to live there.  By the time it ended just about everyone was fed up of it and it has subsequently had few mourners.  Certainly nobody is likely to get very far trying to bring it back. But