Books

  • Statistics often make me uneasy. Stripped of context, they can be twisted to tell a misleading story—and it frequently is. Yet, there are moments when numbers, stark and raw, help us grasp the scale of events too vast for words alone. It is one of those moments. Between July 15, 1942, and September 13, 1944,

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  • Cannibal turned vegetarian

    Armin Meiwes placed an ad on “The Cannibal Cafe” website asking for someone to eat, and shockingly, someone answered. ++Before you read on you might want to put down your sandwich first++ To the family next door, Armin Meiwes seemed the perfect neighbour. He mowed their lawn, repaired their car and even invited them round

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  • Joanne D. Gilbert, M.Ed., is an acclaimed author, sought-after educator, and captivating public speaker. Raised in the close-knit community of Oak Park, Michigan—a predominantly Jewish suburb of Detroit—Joanne was surrounded by individuals whose lives bore witness to extraordinary resilience. Many of her neighbors were Holocaust survivors who had courageously defied the Nazis. Their poignant and

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  • The real Edmund Reid

    I absolutely love the BBC/Amazon Prime TV Drama “Ripper Street” and I think the last season was the best season so far. I only found out recently that the main character in the show was based on the actual inspector in the Jack the Ripper case, Edmund Reid. Detective Inspector Edmund John James Reid (21

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  • Karl van Beethoven

    BBC 4 was showing ‘Beethoven’s Ninth Unwrapped’ last night to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s extraordinary piece. Aurora Orchestra took to the stage at the Royal Albert Hall with a signature memorised performance, led by conductor Nicholas Collon, and a dramatic exploration into the intricacies of the music and the maestro. The

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  • Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, first published on 19 December 1843, is one of the most enduring works of English literature and a defining text of the Victorian era. Although it is often regarded as a simple holiday story, the novella is a sophisticated moral narrative that addresses social inequality, personal responsibility, and the possibility

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  • The Ritchie Boys

    The Ritchie Boys were a group of military intelligence officers and enlisted men of World War II trained at Camp Ritchie in Maryland, USA. Many of them were Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany and other Axis countries. They were primarily recruited from immigrant communities in the United States, particularly those who spoke German,

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  • The phrase “our man in New York” most commonly refers to William Stephenson, the Canadian-born MI6 officer who led a covert British intelligence operation in the United States aimed at shaping public opinion and encouraging American entry into the Second World War. His remarkable work is the focus of Henry Hemming’s critically acclaimed 2019 non-fiction

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  • This might seem like a strange statement for me to make to the people who read my blogs, but when it comes down to it, I know very little in relation to the Holocaust. Yes, I do know the statistics and the numbers. Yes, I do know the stories of the survivors and even a

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  • November 22, 1963, is a date forever etched into the fabric of American history. It was the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, plunging the nation into shock and sorrow. Amid the chaos and heartbreak of that day, another tragedy unfolded—a story often overshadowed but no less significant. It was the killing of Dallas

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