Franz Kafka’s instruction to his literary executor, Max Brod, was very clear: burn everything. Mercifully, he did not. Equally fortunately for students of history, there are many collections of private papers that show people’s inner thoughts, their correspondences and what came across their desks that they could not or would not allow to come to [...]

As Lord Denning put it, “justice in the country is open to all, like the Ritz Hotel”. This seems increasingly true of Mohammed al-Fayed and his pursuit of what appears to be a conspiracy theory. I do wonder whether someone who brands Prince Philip a ‘Nazi’, including under direct and specific questioning, before saying that [...]

I have updated the feeds for my blog; on the front page at davecole.org/blog, the only feeds are Atom and RSS. If you go to a post’s individual page, there will also be the RSS feed for comments on that post. It should make it easier to find individual feeds. I recommend Thunderbird or Sage [...]

The effect of the picaresque novel – seeing things through the eyes of a traveling, rough diamond – would influence, outside of Spain, Voltaire (Candide), Kipling (Kim) and umpteen Westerns. It also led, I think in no small part, to the creation of the most recent album I have bought, Picaresque by the Decembrists. I [...]

I am in the very fortunate position of actually enjoying my job. This is in great contrast to previous employment I have had and, from what I understand, great contrast to my peer group and, without a doubt, the greater part of people who live on this island. That having been said, I have found [...]

Well, some of them. I am in the process of putting some of my photos on my webspace. There are only two albums up at the moment, but I hope to add more as and when I have time. Do please take a look at davecole.org/photo. xD.

Dhimmitude is a pejorative term that refers to people in the West who, in the opinion of users of the word, are guilty of surrendering to Islam. Islam, it would appear by reading the profferings of people who use the term, is the greatest evil out there and it seeks to insist that all non-Muslims [...]

Matt Wardman ran a very interesting online symposium in the wake of the Conway affair in which he kindly asked me to participate. I’m going to write some thoughts when I’ve had time to digest the various posts, but in the meantime, do please look at the five posts from Tim Ireland (who can also [...]

I wrote here about the limits of the Wilson Doctrine and said It’s not clear, equally, whether the Wilson doctrine would apply to Gerry Adams, Martin McGuiness, Michelle Gildernew, Conor Murphy and Pat Doherty (the Sinn Féin MPs who have not taken an oath of allegiance and so are barred from sitting at Westminster). Imagine [...]

After all the hubbub about the Archbishop of Canterbury, I thought I would put forward a suggestion for a new motto for the French navy. It is to be the French for “it is time to go to the water” à l’eau – c’est l’heure xD.