An encounter with an amateur Icelandic historian leaves Rita pondering the counterfactuals... Sometimes you have to travel far away to learn the history of your own neighborhood. In Iceland this summer we had a chance encounter with a loquacious bus driver who told us a fascinating story from World War II, ... Read More...
Europe
Rita returns to her ancestral Belgian homelands, and finds that the historical cities have succumbed to a plague of modern public art... Martin McDonagh’s film In Bruges opened the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and went on to become a cult hit. The story of hapless Irish hit men stuck in the ... Read More...
When she was a teenager Misti Traya travelled from America to spend three months working in an orphanage in Romania. This is what happened to her... When I was 15, I went on a mission of mercy. My mission was this: Dear God, please let the Ivies have mercy on my ... Read More...
Steerforth introduces the police photography of Arnold Odermatt, which elevates everyday mundanity to the level of art... One morning I told a colleague that I'd ordered a book of photographs of the Swiss police force. She looked at me as if I was mad and I could see her point. But perhaps ... Read More...
Daniel Kalder discovers a French comic book about Vladimir Putin, which reveals much about how western Europe struggles to categorise the Russian president... As regular visitors to this site will know, I have an interest in bandes dessinées, i.e. French comics. Every now and again I like to bring a particularly ... Read More...
I was twelve when we moved from the city to the country, and soon after that deracinating adventure my father drove us to the National Canine Defence League kennels at West Down, where we acquired a dog. My parents had already secretly sussed out the prime candidate, a mongrel pup ... Read More...
With the world's eyes on the Ukraine, Mahlerman considers the musical history of that troubled region... Unlike the 85% of Americans that apparently cannot locate Ukraine on the map, I know where it is and what it means to me, and it is rather more than 'a country in South Eastern ... Read More...
The above photo shows Lord Uxbridge recovering from the shock of losing his leg - a leg which later went on to become a celebrity in its own right. And so begins another strange Wikipedia article... Lord Uxbridge's leg was shattered by a cannon shot at the Battle of Waterloo and ... Read More...
There's something very 'Tarantino-esque' about today's unusual Wikipedia article, which sounds like the script to a film that hasn't been made yet... The Battle for Castle Itter took place in the final days of World War II, five days after the death of Adolf Hitler. Popular accounts of the battle have ... Read More...
A saucy comic book causes Rita to reflect on American attitudes to sex education... The little girls sat in a corner giggling hysterically over a comic book. Not an unusual sight, until I saw the comic book in question. This happened at a large family gathering in Belgium some years ago ... Read More...