The Moro Séance #3: The Explanation March 12, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryThere has been much theorizing about what really happened at the séance. Let’s review the possibilities. The first possibility is that the séance never took place; that it was a simple legal strategy to give information to the police without having to actually implicate anyone or explain where that information came from. The second possibility […]
The Moro Séance #2: The Protagonists March 11, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryIn the previous post Beach introduced the Moro Seance. Here instead let’s go into more detail about the actors around the table. There were, by most accounts, twelve people including girlfriends, in the house that day but three names stand out: Romano Prodi, Mario Baldassarri and Alberto Clò. The three names were all economics professors […]
The Moro Séance #1: The Background March 10, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryOn 16 March 1978 the Rome commando of the Red Brigade carried out a deadly and efficient attack on a leading Christian Democrat politician Aldo Moro. They murdered five bodyguards on the spot and carried Moro into a two month captivity that would end with this death in the boot of a car. The Moro […]
Facts, Myths and Jean McConville May 8, 2014
Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, ContemporaryThe Jean McConville case is now history in as much as it took place over forty years ago: but it is living, bleeding history and in the last days it has landed an important Irish politician in the cells and rocked the peace process in the six counties. For non-British and non-Irish readers, who may […]
Remembering Bologna January 23, 2012
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryBeachcombing doesn’t normally have much time for railway-stations, but for Bologna he’ll make an exception. It is not the edifice itself that catches his attention, but the way memory has been built into its very fabric: the memory that is of 2 August 1980. At 10.25 on the morning of that day a bomb went […]
Burning a Shed in Wales September 21, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary(Image Alan Fryer) For Beachcombing, the Welsh are one of those elect nations who, along with the Maoris and the Finns, stand at the right side of the throne of God. Yet Welsh history in the last century has been quiet and uninspiring: in marked contrast, say, to that country’s Gaelic neighbour, Ireland, which sweated […]
Blowing Up Robin Hood Airport September 26, 2010
Author: Beach Combing | in : ActualiteRegular readers of this blog will know that Beachcombing is a stickler for chronology. For example, the ‘contemporary’ tag he regularly uses refers strictly to events between Germany’s invasion of Belgium in the summer of 1914 and the birth of Little Miss B in the summer of 2008. But every so often an event comes along […]