A small army of these rather creepy cut-outs have recently cropped up around my area, clearly intended to enhance the mood of maudlin nostalgia which has been ebbing and flowing since the centenary of the start of the First World War in 2014. There are plans afoot for this to peak in a nationwide peal … More Lest We Forget
Most people would associate civilisation with running water, sewers, central heating and hot baths, with travel and trade enabled by ordered government, good roads and a secure currency. Britain enjoyed all these things over 2000 years ago, thanks to our being part of the Roman empire. Of course, the Romans had a nasty controlling habit … More All Roads Lead to Rome
One thing I will say for the Scandis is they’re very organised and very conformist. Told to stay in line, wait, or drive at 50kph they mostly will. Our overnight ferry to Frederikshavn awoke us at 6.15 am, saying we would dock in an hour. We arrived five minutes later, and boats duly came alongside … More 26 hours in Denmark
Here I was about to Nexit – leave Norway, albeit by ferry not act of mass suicide. Sitting in a growing queue at Oslo docks, I noted that mine is the only British car. There are dozens of Dutch, troops of Germans, a few Danes and the odd Swede; just the one Brit. Indeed, I haven’t … More Nexit
I have all but been struck dumb by the monstrous stupidity of my fellow countrymen, much though I expected it. That the overpaid ninnies of England football have also obeyed the popular dictate to leave Europe forthwith merely reminds me of how often we have faced abject failure in the past. To be so severely … More Dumb Struck
Democracy was never supposed to be about mob rule, anymore than you would want a mob of football hooligans to referee the match. What next? Referenda on capital punishment, and enforced repatriation? This is where Germany was 90 years ago, so they have sort of got their way – turning the clock back with the … More aRses Win
I am glad I have been out of the country for the last week of this game of Russian roulette. Europe has, sensibly, been more exercised by the European Cup, a much more appropriate expression of international cooperation and competition, nationalism without nastiness. It has produced some great moments of theatre, much better than recent … More R Day -1
Yesterday I passed over the eponymous Bridge from Copenhagen to Malmo. No corpses or autistic cops spotted, but it still gave me a frisson as it’s not just an icon of Scandinavian cooperation, but of a new European culture. The one some would walk away from. That said, it was lucky my geographical sense remains in working … More R Day -2
This extraordinary edifice in the Antwerp docks stands for the uncomfortable accommodation of old and new you often find in Europe. Looking like a giant inter-galactic space bug trying to mate with a 19th century asylum, it seems to come from the same impulse which drives schoolboys to put a moustache on the Mona Lisa. … More R Day-4
A year ago I travelled through Europe to remind myself what being part of that continent has given us as a people and as a culture. This year I am driving through Belgium, Holland and Germany to visit Denmark and Sweden for the first time, en route to visit my family in Norway. I shall thus, … More R-Day minus 6
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