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Celebrity Mastermind
Specialist subject: Laura Ingalls Wilder
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Tag Archives: 40s
Casablanca: When refugees were glamorous
This was written for the Spectator Coffee House blog, ahead of the Casablanca night at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum on June 22nd, to mark Refugee Week. “I don’t buy and sell human beings,” says Rick to the rival club … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Film, Uncategorized, War
Tagged 40s, Casablanca, cinema, culture, film, Hollywood, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, literature, Nazis, refugees, war
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Half Blood Blues: Jazz, race and Nazis.
When I worked in Berlin in 1998 the trendy record store in the city’s gay-friendly Schoneberg district had a category called “schwarz”(black) music. It took up a lot of the shop and seemed a bizarrely useless generalisation, given the huge … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Film, Germany, Music, Uncategorized, War
Tagged 40s, Berlin, books, Esi Edugyan, Germany, jazz, Louis Armstrong, Nazis, Paris
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The Guinea Pig — experiments in schooling deprived teenagers
Looking at all the wistful posters for the new TV series, Jamie’s Dream School immediately made me think of the Boulting Brothers’ fascinating film sixty three year- old film The Guinea Pig — also for popular entertainment — about an … Continue reading
Posted in Children, Education, Film, Politics, TV, Uncategorized
Tagged 40s, Boulting Brothers, cinema, culture, elitism, film, FTW, grammar schools, politics, Richard Attenborough, tv
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