I’ve lived in Waterloo since 1996. Over the past six months I’ve been helping Mike Bruce with the digitisation of his A Story of Waterloo, a ‘tape slide show’ that since it was first screened in 1982 has achieved something of a mythic status in community circles. These days nobody has the machinery to play [...]
Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States. Four of his predecessors have been killed while in office and there have been near-miss assasination attempts on six others. There have been abortive or ham-fisted attempts on their lives of a further five Presidents. President Obama has, by my reckoning, at least a one [...]
Each month the Mayor of London faces a grilling from the London Assembly, a kind of Mayor’s Question Time. It lasts up to a few hours and there is a webcast of it. But the image quality is spectacularly bad:
I suppose this is what people mean when they talk about ‘faceless officialdom’. It’s only recognisable [...]
In a post earlier this week, I referred to my ‘weekly diet’ of podcasts and I thought it was only fair to open up the larder. I have been podcasting the radio show I present since May 2005. Initially I didn’t know what podcasting was or how to do it. A kind listener explained and [...]
The London Festival of Architecture goes from strength to strength and this year runs from 20 June to 20 July.
Along with the exhibitions, talks, guided walks, debates and parties there is a series of excellent architectural podwalks produced by Ruby Wright. I did one about my neighbourhood, entitled ‘Backstreets of Southwark’. It was featured [...]
The confirmation of Barack Obama as the presumptive Democratic Party candidate for the 2008 presidential election is a historic moment in the history of black America. Previously I’ve posted audio recordings of Bobby Kennedy’s campaign in 1968 and Spiro Agnew’s vice-presidency. Now seems like a good time to turn to the record collection to remember [...]
Help locate London’s fine heritage of Victorian drinking fountains, in celebration of the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.
Public drinking fountains are a simple, modest yet precious civic amenity under threat from neglect and the rise of environmentally catastrophic bottled water. Turn away from the bottle and join a treasure hunt and celebration [...]
Last weekend I came across a second-hand vinyl record of Senator Bobby Kennedy interviewed by David Frost. The interview was conducted during RFK’s 1968 Presidential bid which was to end in his assassination in Los Angeles - just hours after winning the California Democratic primary. The record is a fascinating document of a remarkable man [...]
I am currently a Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. GMF is a nonpartisan American public policy and grantmaking institution dedicated to promoting greater cooperation and understanding between the United States and Europe. Founded in 1972 through a gift from Germany as a permanent memorial to post-World War Two Marshall [...]