More Congo reading

Two more for the springboard reading list. Jeff suggested Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Memoir of a Boy soldier. There’s an interesting controversy about this. The newspaper The Australian claims that the events described in the book happen two years later than Beah says they did. This would mean he was fifteen, not thirteen. [...]

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Live and Learn

When I started the Springboard Reading project, I didn’t really expect it to bear fruit so quickly. About 3 weeks into 2008, I know exponentially more about the Democratic Republic of the Congo. That isn’t hard – in honesty, I didn’t know a lot about it before that anyway. Anyway, today I read this:
A [...]

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Way back when…

Another one for the folk music collection. The singer is Luke Kelly, one of the real giants of Irish folk music. The voice is unmistakable. Luke is also notable for being one of the only people ever to have a ginger afro. Hit the play button, do something else and leave [...]

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Quote for the Day

Civil war is not unlike a fight between lovers: each side knows precisely how to infuriate the other.
– Night Soldiers, Alan Furst.

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Britain’s last WWI veteran

An interesting article about Harry Patch, Britain’s (the world’s?) last surviving World War One veteran, whose life story has just been published. It seems like he hasn’t entirely forgotten his training:
To help jog his memory, a young major in his party fumblingly demonstrated how to change the magazine. ‘I said: “Major, you’d have to [...]

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