We are all obsessed by the Second World War. So when I was invited by my daughter to watch an opera by Kurt Weil written in 1946 I was on the lookout for Nazis. Weil was a communist Jew who had fled to America to escape Hitler who would have taken a dim view of

I am a development scientist.  I work in a lab wearing a white coat mixing things up, just like people imagine scientists do.  It is actually a fairly skilled job that I have acquired through long hours and much repetition.  I’d be a little miffed if somebody off the street could walk in and do

While the invasion by Alaric threw Italy into a crisis, Germany was in turmoil.  There was increasing pressure from the Huns in the East – Gibbon traces its origin all the way back to China, which is probably fanciful but I suppose isn’t impossible.  From this emerged a new barbarian leader who rapidly became an

This is a novel that works on several different levels – Dan Brown style pot-boiler, girlie relationship stuff, ghost story, thriller.  But I am going to ignore all that and just talk about the historical bit.

Alaric may well be the best known German barbarian in Roman history.  He was a Goth of high rank and bizarrely for someone who is mainly remembered for wrecking the empire, his role model was probably the man who was for a time to become his great enemy: Stilicho, whose military expertise had given him

I had a couple of glasses of wine and decided to review a Victorian Things are just crazy in my house sometimes.  Anyway here is the video – there is no script as I was extemporising like the hell raiser that I am.