Twentieth Century

A week of so before Christmas I passed one of the historical markers in the city of Grand Rapids. Pausing to look at the dates and description, and thinking of the many Christmases that have passed since my earliest memories, I began to reflect on the social changes, events, and…

A confession: America frightens me. Not just its violence, though that is part of it. It has more to do with the scale of the place, its vast empty spaces which might swallow a person up, its appearance as one country with one language and one culture. This fear is…

The Sonnet was a very popular form that arose in the early 13th century and was created by a poet by the name of Jacopo da Lentini in Sicily. He developed a 14 line model meant to be sung in Latin. This Italian sonnet was written in hendecasyllabic verse which…

How slaughter on the battlefields of WW1 had a disastrous impact on the Welsh language — After the last census, it was determined that almost 20% of the population of Wales could speak Welsh. The most recent language survey in 2019 by the ONS put this figure at almost 30%, showing a steady and definite rise in people learning the native tongue of Wales. The number…

So this is the third part of my short series of blogs on how we’ve developed the Key Stage 3 History curriculum at my current school — please follow the links for parts one and two. In my final post in this series I’ll explore our next steps for the…

In my experience, it’s been hard to watch a romantic comedy and walk away thinking wow, what a piece of art. They were popcorn flicks, box office cash grabs to get couples in the seats. It wasn’t until recently, when I watched some less conventional films in the genre that…

Alan Sorrell is revered as one of the greatest archaeological reconstruction illustrators but his oeuvrereveals a more creative artist. Alan Sorrell Born in Tooting Bec in 1904 to a relatively prosperous family, his early life was marked with love and tragedy. The family moved to Southend and Alan was part of a…

The decline of duelling coincided with the rise of modern mass spectator sport. For some enterprising Edwardians, the opportunity to combine the two was simply too tempting to resist — England’s last fatal duel, fought purely as a matter of honour, was contested on the 19th October 1852. The duellists, Frenchmen both, had developed an enmity while living in exile from the Second Republic of Napoleon III. More proximately, and perhaps more relatable to modern readers, Duellist 1, Emmanuel Barthélemy…

“Maneki Neko” by Bruce Sterling (1998) Originally published in Hayakawa’s Science Fiction Magazine English version first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction “I can’t go on,” his brother said. Tsuyoshi Shimizu looked thoughtfully into the screen of his pasokon. …