Tag: Life

Clouds loom over the 25th birthday of the World Wide Web

You might not know it but the modern internet is 25 years old today!  It started life as an idea in a paper written by a young computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee in a rather obscure laboratory in Europe known as CERN. At first his idea wasn’t exactly taken on enthusiastically by his colleagues with… Continue reading Clouds loom over the 25th birthday of the World Wide Web

Bitten to death by a dead mans head: The unfortunate, deserving & true tale of Sigurd Eysteinsson

One of the slightly odd pleasures I had when I was studying at university was learning of various terrible ways people died or executed.  To some degree this is normal for many historians but as I majored in amongst others, Mongol history, then it might be clear that I had more deaths than usual to… Continue reading Bitten to death by a dead mans head: The unfortunate, deserving & true tale of Sigurd Eysteinsson

The Book Thief

Yesterday I went to the cinema as I often do on a Tuesday morning, one of the benefits of working from home.  Usually the cinema is empty with the staff outnumbering the movie-goers but not yesterday. The cinema is exactly 12 minutes walk away and there are usually 15 minutes of trailers before the film… Continue reading The Book Thief

The tragic genius of Vincent van Gogh

One of the things I was looking forward to when visiting Paris though was not the over-hyped Mona Lisa but the works of Vincent van Gogh in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris, one of the largest museums of modern art in the world. Van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter.  His work is nearly always… Continue reading The tragic genius of Vincent van Gogh

My first cover story!

I thought that I might give a little update on my writing as the last few weeks have been very productive ones in terms of writing.  I’m about to have an article published by a leading environmental magazine (more details when it is out) on a subject relating to water poverty in Africa.  It is… Continue reading My first cover story!

Ukraine, Putin and the West – What you need to know

It’s not often I write political pieces, but the scenes on the television news coming out of Kiev are terrible.  Not so long ago, Kiev hosted international football tournaments and was fast becoming a city-break destination for western Europeans rather like Prague or Krakow. Ukraine was moving along the path towards European Union membership which… Continue reading Ukraine, Putin and the West – What you need to know

Walking through a graveyard of giants

I try to go for a walk every day, it adds a bit of routine which is necessary when writing at home in the winter nearly every day.  Sometimes I go along the canal, other times through parks and across the countryside along ancient pathways.  Many of these areas are currently partially flooded as much… Continue reading Walking through a graveyard of giants

Bad bosses, Bullies, Dilbert and the Peter Principle

I don’t know about you but during my 20 years working in a variety of office based environments, the one thing that struck me almost since the first day was that by and large, the majority of managers are to a certain extent unsuitable. In my time so far I have had 11 managers and… Continue reading Bad bosses, Bullies, Dilbert and the Peter Principle

Visiting Montmatre, home of artists and Sacre Couer

So, we have just about reached the end of our short break in Paris.   To be honest I could stay here a lot longer.  There may be a few strange things about the place but overall I love it.  It’s relative compactness and spacious feeling pavements and public transport are a delight and its overwhelmingly… Continue reading Visiting Montmatre, home of artists and Sacre Couer