Los Angeles:

Conrad, the Otago & Incat

10 February 2013 | Places

Joseph Conrad – author of Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness (the literary inspiration for Apocalypse Now) only had one ship command during his nautical career. In 1899 the sailing ship Otago put in to Bangkok when its captain died. Conrad assumed the command and sailed t...

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Argo & the missing Paykans

12 December 2012 | Media

▲ Paykans and the Ayatollah in Isfahan OK it’s a movie, not a book or an article – I went to see Argo the Ben Affleck film about getting six American diplomats out of Tehran during the 1980 Iran ‘hostage crisis’. Great movie although it’s been criticised for glor...

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Southern England Museums

5 November 2012 | Culture

▲  Flying out of London to Morocco a few weeks ago we passed just north of the Isle of Wight, with the whole island framed in my window. Earlier this year we sailed around the southern coast of the island and then up the Solent into Southampton on board the Queen Ma...

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In Flight

15 April 2012 | Transport

Aircraft Names    The Qantas A380 fleet is named after famous Australian aviators. Their first A380 was named after Nancy Bird Walton. That was the aircraft which suffered an engine explosion out of Singapore in 2010 and spent over a year on the ground in Singapore b...

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Music

27 December 2010 | Culture

In 2009 I caught four great rock concerts – Leonard Cohen and then Neil Young in Melbourne, Van Morrison at the Albert Hall in London, Al Stewart in Newcastle in northern England. Rock-wise nothing hit the same high in 2010, not even U2 on their 360º tour when it came...

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