In January 2026, I gave a talk at the Bridge and District History Society on the country estate on the edge of the village that was one of the most important cricketing venues in England during the late 18^th century, featuring the best players in the land in several landmark matches, before the establishment of Lords cricket ground in London in 1787.

At the request of those who missed it, here is a transcript and a few selected images from the presentation. I have added links to individual player profiles. Continue reading →

During the last years of her life, my mother lived in a quiet retirement community on St. Radigund’s Street in Canterbury. She had been a high school history teacher who specialised in the Tudor era but I am not sure even she was aware of the fact that, six centuries ago, her street had been the site of an abortive uprising that would eventually lead to one of the most celebrated dynastic struggles in English history.
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My fifteenth birthday passed uneventfully with Wednesday morning classes as usual at my high school. At the same time, 12,000 kilometres to the south, several thousand students in the Johannesburg township of Soweto, about my age or younger, staged a march in protest at the government’s decision to make Afrikaans a medium of instruction in their schools. The introduction of “the language of the oppressor” was the final straw for students who had endured years of overcrowded, restrictive and repressive schooling. Their parents had failed to make a stand. They had no choice but to fight back.
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Sitting on a coffee table in the library of Belmont House, a graceful 18^th century mansion nestled in the heart of the Kent countryside, is a bulky metallic souvenir, presented to the owner of the property, the fourth Lord Harris, in March 1904 by the employees of Consolidated Gold Fields of South Africa, Ltd. in Johannesburg. The inscription thanks his lordship, who was company chairman at the time of his visit, for “the kindly interest displayed in their welfare.”
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Back when she was still publicly accessible, Ivanka Trump used to tell a story about her father’s reaction to seeing a homeless man sitting in front of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in New York during the 1990s:

“I remember my father pointing to him and saying, ‘You know, that guy has US$8 billion more than me,’ because he was in such extreme debt at that point.”

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Across the road from the ancient scaffold on Tower Hill that witnessed the execution of more than 125 traitors, heretics and those who simply displeased the monarch is a pub named the Traitors Gate. Continue reading →

Having little interest in the monarchy, I never paid much attention to the long-running Netflix series The Crown until I learned that one of my favourite television characters from my childhood, Bagpuss, appeared briefly in two episodes of Season Four.

In Season Four, Episode Four, Favourites, a heavily pregnant Princess Diana lies in bed at Highgrove House, locking herself away from her abusive husband who is banging at the door, demanding that she come downstairs to meet his mother. She turns to the television, increases the volume on her remote, and settles back to watch Bagpuss and The Frog Princess. Continue reading →

In the final episode of the second season of America’s Sweethearts, it was revealed that the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (DCC) will receive a pay raise of roughly 400 percent for the upcoming 2025 season.

While that sounds like a lot, the increase comes from a ridiculously low base where these elite athletes earned about the same as a fast-food worker. Even the most senior squad members made just US$15 an hour, with US$500 for each game day appearance in 2024, while the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback, Dak Prescott, made US$60 million in what was a bad losing season. Continue reading →

Donald Trump’s decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico attracted a lot of media attention and widespread derision. But since the United States does not own that body of water, the executive order is kind of meaningless.

What is more significant is the decision made at the same time to restore the name of America’s tallest mountain to Mount McKinley. Continue reading →

In his latest outburst, threatening to regain control over the Panama Canal unless the Panamanian government reduces transit fees for US shipping, President Trump reminded us of just how much his rhetoric echoes that the 26^th president of the United States, the man who secured the canal for America in the first place, Theodore Roosevelt.
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