If challenged to a game of Word Association, top of my list of responses to "Berlin" would not be "Morality"; in fact it would be hard-pressed to make it as high as the bottom of my list. Dietrich (The Blue Angel), Liza with a Zee (Cabaret) and Political Movement with a Zee (every war movie between…
Obama, Join The Circus!
I read everything that John Le Carre ever wrote until he, like Paul Simon, went African. His Cold War novels had me chained to the page. Who could forget the very end of the Quest for Karla Trilogy as Smiley's People, the last in the series, draws to a close? Spoiler Alert - you may be about to…
What’s in a name?
The first poem I studied in secondary school began: "The pig lay on a barrow dead, motionless". Poet Laureate Ted Hughes' ensuing nine sickeningly graphic, non-rhyming stanzas made me want to vomit and scuppered any chance that Wordsworth, Byron or Shelley might offer the key to my romantic soul. It was not surprising, therefore, that the death of Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney a…
Reindeer in the headlines
Oslo is not the capital of Sweden, and that nice King Harald, who has his photograph taken once a year handing out coveted prizes to clever people, is not the King of Sweden. Harald is King of Norway, which is just as well really as he lives in Oslo which is the capital of Norway (and…
Georgia on my mind
When, on August 16, I saw the announcement that Bert Lance had died, memories of the disappointments of that period of my life known as "coming-of-age" came flooding back. Lance was a Georgian banker (born 82 years ago a little closer to Atlanta than Tbilisi) who took the train up from the South to Washington when Jimmy (pronounced Jimmuh)…
Tax Break 