Samuel Thompson

Why write? For a privileged few, journalists, columnists and the like, the answer is to pay the bills. For an even more fortunate élite of best-selling authors, writing can provide a very pleasant lifestyle. It is a dream of many budding writers, very few of whom will make more than a few hundred pounds from efforts if that. Why write? For most writers the answer is simple, they have something to say and they want people to hear it, it …

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The Ukraine war has now lasted longer than the First World War. What was intended as a three-day Blitzkreig to seize Kiyiv and the regions bordering Russia, has turned into a stalemate reminiscent of the Western Front in the First World War, where gains are measured in yards rather than miles. Unlike earlier wars, the main cause of death is not artillery, but the drone. According to the Latvian intelligence service, 70-90% of all casualties are caused by drones.[1] President …

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It must be twenty years ago now. My parents were in their mid-seventies so I took them holiday to France for a week while they were still healthy and mobile enough to do so. I rented a gite in St Valery-sur-Somme, a picturesque fishing village at the mouth of the Somme estuary. The town’s chief claim to fame is a tower where Joan of Arc was briefly imprisoned en route to meet her fate at Rouen. My father and I …

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It is said that history doesn’t actually repeat itself, but it often rhymes. The 1930s were in some ways similar to the recent decade; the settlement following the First World War was unravelling, and political extremism was on the rise. The future was uncertain and worrying, and there was disagreement on how to protect the United Kingdom from future threats. The development of aviation raised the very real prospect of cities being destroyed from the sky. It was against this …

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When NASA first sent men into space in the 1960s, it faced the problem of how to write in zero gravity and spent millions of dollars designing a pen that would work in space. The Soviets got around the same problem by using pencils. The story may not be true but it illustrates that a cheap technology can produce similar results to an expensive one. On Sunday past, the Russia/Ukraine war took a dramatic turn when the Ukrainian intelligence services …

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By the time you read this the annual Russian victory parade may have taken place in Moscow. It is now eighty years since the end of the Second World War in Europe and its remembrance perhaps says as much about the present as the past. The three principal victors, the USSR and it successor state, Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom have tended to talk up their own contributions which inevitably undermines that of others. President Trump, never …

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Younger readers won’t remember this but thirty years ago (yes, older readers, doesn’t time fly!) Allied Dunbar ran a TV ad where a middle-aged man finds a pregnancy test in the bathroom and immediately berates his teenage daughter about being careful only to find out it his wife who is pregnant. The ad then breaks into the 1930s Irving Berlin song, ‘There May be Trouble ahead’. If the re-election of Donald Trump is a surprise political baby, then the role …

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Back in 2002, I knew a former RAF man. He had served as a navigator on a Mosquito fighter/bomber in the Far East during the Second World War. He was a proud member of the RAF aircrew association and, like many veterans of that war, dutifully attended the remembrance service at the cenotaph in Belfast every year. What made the 2002 service different from the ones before it, was that Belfast’s first republican Lord Mayor, Alex Maskey, laid a wreath. …

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One of the most enduring mysteries of the Holocaust is how did one of the most cultured societies in Europe debase itself through the mass murder of Jews and others to the tune of around eleven million people? For decades we have looked back on the Second World War with a sense of moral superiority, the Germans were depraved, evil, while we were the good guys who helped defeat the killers, bring them to justice and expose their crimes to …

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This year’s D-Day commemoration will probably be the last big anniversary with veterans in attendance as even the youngest of them are almost a century old. As the saying goes, these old soldiers will shortly fade away. Thanks to saturation press coverage, almost every one has heard of D-Day but only people with an interest in military history actually understand what it was, how and why it happened and its significance. I have to confess a personal interest in the …

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I find there are only so many photos and clips of dead and shredded children one can take. The material coming out of the Middle East since October 7th has been heart rendering and anyone with an iota of empathy could not fail to be deeply affected by it. The pictures speak for themselves and for the purposes of this article I do not need to describe the suffering, it is self-apparent. Those who have read some of my previous …

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The twenties have been disappointing, haven’t they? So far, we’ve had a global pandemic, murderous wars and a lurch towards irreversible climate change. Our luck has to change, hasn’t it? After consulting my crystal ball and the entrails of various animals, here’s my satirical look ahead to 2024. January – In the United States Donald Trump surprisingly loses the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary to his hard-line challenger from Mississippi, Congressman I. Love-Gunns. Love-Gunns is running in a platform …

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Around 230,000 souls met their maker that day, no one knows for sure, making 26th December 2004 one of the deadliest days in human history. I had hoped to publish an account I made a few days after the event when the memory was still fresh, but unfortunately the document is lost in some hidden recess of my hard drive. Still, it was the type of day one does not forget and it remains perhaps, the defining experience of my …

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A few months ago, I was asked to review Rewriting the Troubles: War and Propaganda Ireland and Algeria by Patrick Anderson for another website. The book is well researched and certainly worth a read. It concentrates on how the conflicts in Algeria and Northern Ireland were reported on, primarily by the British press, but also made a wider comparison. Superficially, there are many similarities between the Algerian War of Independence fought against France 1954-62 and the IRA struggle against Britain …

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