Writing Worth Reading
Last updated 11 pm GMT
Writing Worth Reading
In 1944, elite Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda was sent to the Filipino island of Lubang on a mission to carry out sabotage attacks. He was ordered never to surrender. And he didn't. Not until 29 years after the war ended
Historian serves up satisfying slice of social history, remembering his childhood growing up Jewish in 1950s London. "Gol-ders Green: get yer passports out!" shouted the bus conductors, to chuckles all round
George Dyson, son of physicist Freeman, discusses origins of the computer. Key figures were Turing, von Neumann and Bigelow. "The hardware came out of the mud of World War II, and the code fell out of abstract mathematical concepts"
We've peaked. "Birth rates, defence spending, bond prices, welfare spending versus wealth creation; everything that historians look to in order to gauge the health of empires suggests that Europe’s fire has gone out" (Free reg/$)
"Speer’s planned rebuilding of Berlin is too readily dismissed as a Nazi pipedream; a still-born manifestation of Hitler’s architectural fantasies thankfully confined to the drawing board." In fact, it was central to Nazi ideology
"Few men have acquired so scandalous a reputation as did Basil Zaharoff, alias Count Zacharoff." Here's how he went from brothel tout, bigamist and arsonist to university benefactor, intimate of royalty, international arms dealer
"Athens, with its brilliant intellectual and cultural achievements, enjoyed a free market in education. Sparta, an intellectual and cultural wasteland, was dominated by a system of state education." One which was to influence many
Fabulous, too brief story of 19th century Englishman determined to outdo Gustav Eiffel and Paris. Design competition for London tower resulted in proposals for hanging vegetable gardens and sky railways. It didn't work out well
Did Glamis Castle, in the Scottish lowlands, have a secret to hide? Dash picks up the story of "an enigma that involved a hidden room, a secret passage, scandal, and shadowy figures glimpsed by night on castle battlements"
Some may argue there are contenders of more recent vintage but Milton proposes John Blunt. "The countdown to disaster began in January 1720, when Blunt developed a scheme to eradicate Britain’s crippling national debt"
For decades, Piltdown Man was thought to be one of the most important discoveries in human evolutionary history. Alas, it was a fraud. But who were the hoaxers, how did they do it, and why? The mystery may be about to be unravelled
"I climbed the stairs to find two adjacent doors on a landing. There was a sign on one door: 'Prof Dr Freud'. As I pushed open the door and walked into the deserted museum I knew one thing for sure – I had the idea for a novel"
Delegates at the first Zionist congress in 1897. Image from Wikimedia Commons
