The racist, xenophobic, and thoroughly buffoonish Major from Fawlty Towers once pronounced that he ‘hates Germans…love women.’
‘What about German women?’ asks Connie Booth, mischievously.
‘Good card players!’ is the Major’s immediate response.

When we watched Angela Merkel talking to parliament this afternoon, we looked at each other and were grateful we weren’t the gambling types. Continue reading →

The recent passing of Shirley Temple at the age of 85 came only a few days after what would’ve been the 101st birthday of Rosa Parks. Both names conjure an immediate, powerful image: the dancing girl, all dimples and ringlets, and the footsore unmovable passenger who started the Montgomery bus boycott, and hence the Civil Rights Movement.

Few readers of this blog have probably seen a Shirley Temple picture, start to finish, as the straightforward piece of entertainment it was intended to be. And yet we all have an idea of who she was. Rather more readers may remember Rosa Parks’s unfolding story, or if not, will be familiar with the ending of apartheid in South Africa, and empathise with the justice of her cause: segregation in the United States today feels utterly unbelievable, and yet it is a few short decades past. Continue reading →