Ken Loach was Kenneth Williams' understudy in a West End revueIn 1961 Sheila Hancock was appearing in the West End revue One Over the Eight. In her memoir The Two of Us: My Life with John Thaw she writes: The chief joy of One Over the Eight for me was meeting and becoming friends with the writer of the show, Peter Cook, and Kenneth [Williams], the maverick star. But she didn't feel London was really swinging yet and neither did Kenneth Williams: One night after the show, when I gave him a lift back to his chaste flat on the back of my Lambretta, he waved his furled umbrella at ... (more) |
The Joy of Six 1502"As need has grown and reform and resources have stalled, 1.9 million people in England alone provided a 'full-time' (defined as 35 hours or more) week of care in 2023-24 - that's 70 per cent more than 20 years ago. Others have to fit caring responsibilities around their jobs: dropping off the kids at school, going to the office and then helping their elderly parents bathe and eat."Frances Ryan asks who will care for the carers. Ari Berman names the far-right conspiracists who are urging Trump to take control of the mid-term elections. Tao Wang says a study of the ... (more) |
Observations of an Expat: Two-State SolutionTWO-STATE SOLUTION. That is the only answer to the Palestinian conundrum; the Arab-Israeli problem and now, the Iran War. Neither the US nor Israel can bomb the Palestinian issue out of existence. It only creates recruiting sergeants for future generations. Hitler tried it with his Final Solution. Even though six million Jews died in horrific circumstances he failed. The Jewish state rose from the ashes of the Holocaust with a determination that they will never again face extermination and that the land of Israel is theirs by right of God's promise to Abraham. Problem was that the Biblical land was ... (more) |
Basque refugees in SwanseaI think it is commonly known that a large number of people left the UK, and South Wales in particular, to fight the fascists in the Spanish civil war. In fact, the South Wales Miners Musuem, now relocated to Y Storfa in Swansea City Centre, has a huge amount of material about those prepared to fight and die for the cause. It is not so well known that Swansea hosted refugees who had undertaken the reverse journey. Swansea University's history website reports that in May 1937, nearly 4,000 children arrived in Southampton aboard the Habana, fleeing the horrors of the ... (more) |