Bat-men and New York, 1835 July 31, 2010
Author: Beach Combing | in : ModernBeachcombing alluded in a recent post to the danger of misinformation in a world that had less instantaneous communications than our own. After all, if Beachcombing flies from London to Washington DC today and asserts, on arrival, that the French island of Corsica has sunk beneath the waves a […]
False Armistice: the Cable that Lied to a Nation July 28, 2010
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryA story of misplaced joy with, Beachcombing promises, no elephants. In a world of instant communication it is all too easy to forget how long it once took to get a message from one side of the world to another. Think of the months needed for a seventeenth-century Spanish governor in […]
The Last Cavalry Charge in History? June 16, 2010
Author: Beach Combing | in : ContemporaryIt is a long ago Sunday and Beachcombing, aged ten, is playing with his plastic Napoleonic soldiers. In walks Beachcombing’s father with his dangerous pacifist tendencies and pointing to a group of charging cavalry observes: ‘They must have suffered terribly when their horses were shot from under […]