Jan Morris, the celebrated travel writer and author, well known as a transgender pioneer, received glowing obituaries when she died in 2020 aged 94. She led an extraordinary life, a cavalry officer during WW11, marrying and having five children, climbing three-quarters way up Everest to witness Hillary conquer it in 1953, and reporting in Egypt … Read more
Ulysses S Grant, the 18th US President from 1869 to 1877, was an effective civil rights executive who created the Justice Department, prosecuted the Klan, worked to protect African Americans civil rights and promoted an innovative Native American policy. He also campaigned against polygamy and pornographers. Before his political career, he had been a military … Read more
A manic urge to take power in the area of relationship was the thrust of the recent Solar Eclipse in Scorpio. Applying it to something as inconsequential as the sentimental gushing and whingeing from the Montecito pair might seem over the top were it not for the resonance it has in the zeitgeist – albeit … Read more
The fine line between courage and madness, mythic heroism and blind unrealistic faith was never clearer than in explorer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl’s epic 1947 Kon Tiki voyage between South America and the South Sea Islands. Obsessed with the notion that ancient Peruvian peoples had crossed 900 miles of stormy sea to people Polynesia, he … Read more
Turbulent lives filled with emotional angst appear to be the norm for female country and western singers. Tammy Wynette’s broken life is highlighted in a new miniseries which takes a journey through her tumultuous third marriage with alcoholic and abusive country artist George Jones. Her father died when she was nine months old and she … Read more
Robert Downey Jr has been remarkably forgiving of his counter-culture film director father in a ‘sad and affectionate’ home-movie portrait about to air on Netflix, which only finished after senior died of Parkinsons aged 80. Robert Downey Sr was addicted to drugs and alcohol and introduced junior to marijuana when he was six years … Read more
The East India Company formed in the final years of Queen Elizabeth 1’s reign grew into a formidable enterprise which seized control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. At its peak, it was the largest corporation in the world and had its own army of 260,000 … Read more
Prince William looks fit to explode as his much punted Boston Earthshot trip is knocked sideways by the furore over unbelievably crass questions from a close Royal intimate at a London charity function. Lady Susan Hussey, a former lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth, managed to make one black invitee feel as if she didn’t belong after … Read more
Christine McVie, singer and songwriter of the stratospherically successful, 100 million record-selling Fleetwood Mac, behind hits including Little Lies, Everywhere, Don’t Stop, Say You Love Me, and Songbird, has died at the age of 79. She stayed for two decades through an era of wild excess, heavy cocaine addiction and romantic tangles as she married … Read more
The world is going to hell in a handbasket – the worst it has ever been – is a frequent cry of every generation so it is illuminating to consider the gin-sodden, violent, addiction-addled times of Georgian England in the 18th Century. Jane Austen glossed over the dark side and left the impression of an … Read more