October 20th, 2009
Really rich men smoking quietly in corners
“There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced, as by a good club.” I thought of that quote by Esmond Warner (d. 1984), the late honorary librarian of Brooks’s in London, when I was in Barcelona in recent days. Breakfasting at the Circulo Ecuestre, lunching at [...]
October 8th, 2009
Aleister Crowley’s model of a modern major-general
We might not be seeing much of this in the beleaguered British Army in Afghanistan, but one hallmark of this world-famous fighting force has always been its ability to draw in and synthesize a unique range of talents. What other country (or empire or Crown) would take a young rebel commander in a far-off land [...]
October 2nd, 2009
Given reports of Adolf Hitler’s escape to his lunar base, you just can’t be too careful anymore
The Führer is with us still –- or so some think. After American researchers claimed, in a History Channel documentary broadcast in the United States, that the skull fragments of Adolf Hitler held in the Russian federal archives are those of a woman, conspiracy theorists were re-energised to claim that Hitler escaped from the bunker [...]