PhilipM
@biblio-phil
Lover of history, books, travel & trains🌏Proud old-fashioned liberal; European citizen🇪🇺; Dual nationality🇬🇧🇳🇱; Hammers fan⚒️⚽️; Husband & Dad. #FBPE #RejoinEU #SlavaUkraini 🇺🇦✌️#Democracy💙 "Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards"
Current daytime reading: 🌝 'The Magician'- Colm Tóibín. Biographical fiction at its best, recounting the life of Thomas Mann and his often difficult, troubled family relationships through the turbulent 20th century. Tóibín weaves the story through Mann's inner voice and sexual yearning #Booksky 📚🤓😃
Current night reading: 🌚 'Homer's Odyssey'- Simon Armitage. The release of Nolan's blockbuster movie compelled me to root around my bookshelves for this re-telling of the Homeric epic. Faithful to the story, it is retold in an accessible, pacy modern vernacular with wit and poetry #Booksky 📚🤓😃
And read 'America War' by Omar El Akkad. It's as if the country is teetering on the brink of the story it tells.
Count Binface needs to get on the blower and trash-talk the corrupt clown Infantino!
Having dismissed a red card for a USA player, FIFA now ban England's #Quansah for two games. And let's not forget #Messi escapes red cards while #FIFA conspire to let #Argentina cheat #Egypt. This blatant corruption & cheating is all down to that venal poltroon, #Infantino
A ramblin' man... Even sycophants find his 'weaving' incoherence amusing...
Who would voters rather choose between the two? A candidate who will clear out the trashy politicians in Clacton? Or a frog who will continue to treat the constituency as an excuse to be a member of parliament while feathering his nest with suspect overseas payments in to his bank account?
Current night reading: 🌚 'When the Doves Disappeared'- Sofi Oksanen. Long on my 'to read' pile this superb historical fiction is about duplicity, betrayal, and shape-shifting set against the backdrop of Estonia's turbulent 20th century occupied in turn by Nazi Germany & the USSR. #Booksky 📚🤓😃
Current daytime reading: 🌝 'Red Man's Bones'- Benita Eisler. Biography of George Catlin, self-taught artist who in the 1830s traversed America's mid-West painting portraits & scenes of various First Nation tribes in the raw mid-West for 'posterity'. A fascinating, if elusive, man. #Booksky 📚🤓😃
Putin's 'special military operation' launched against Ukraine in 2022 has now gone on longer than both the Soviet fight against Nazi Germany and all of World War I. Quite an achievement. A military catastrophe more like. And a brilliant strategic fightback by Ukraine. Respect!🫡 #SlavaUkraini 🇺🇦
A geopolitical 'vibe shift' favouring Ukraine is testament to its resilience & bravery in taking the fight to Russia. To tip the scales further, Europe can do more by "tightening sanctions, enforcing existing ones better & cracking down on circumvention, while transferring frozen assets to Ukraine"
Current night reading: 🌚 'The Levant Trilogy'- Olivia Manning. Read her fine Balkan Trilogy last year following the adventures of Guy & Harriet Pringle early in WWII. 'Twas time to find out how the stoic peripatetic couple were faring in Egypt. God knows why Harriet puts up with him! #Booksky 📚🤓😃
Current daytime reading: 🌝 'Forgotten Lands: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia'- Max Egremont. My recent reading about the WWI Eastern Front led me to this book. It's a lovely elegiac history. Egremont ferrets out stories of the people & events in a region benighted by tragedy #Booksky 📚🤓😃
David Hockney RIP. Maestro. Now on the other side of Garrowby Hill. Thank you.
🤣 Let's see how ICE deal with this lot! Norwegian football team about to embark for the USA and World Cup 2026 🇺🇸💥🥊🇳🇴
Current daytime reading: 🌝 'New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors 1485-1603'- Susan Brigden. It's long been on my unread pile until a visit to a Tudor portraits exhibition in London. I had to learn more! Brigden supplies it. A brilliant exposition of a complex, turbulent era #Booksky 📚🤓😃
Currently reading: 'The Director'- Daniel Kehlmann. Having seen Andres Veiel’s documentary 'Riefenstahl' that explored her relationship to Nazism, 'The Director' is perfect follow-on fiction about G.W. Pabst, an Austrian 1930s film director, compromising his integrity in Nazi Germany #Booksky✔️📖📽️
Another night and another of Russia's brutal and murderous attacks on Ukraine's civilian population. To protect civilians Europe's NATO allies need to do more beyond just sanctions, arms & money and jointly implement a 'No Fly Zone' over Ukraine's air space. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...
About right. But have the poor deluded souls with a propensity to vote Reform twigged? The fight is not just against Faragism and populist Toryism but against their foundational Idiocracy of ignorant followers
For all fellow railway fanatics out there. London Overground has a handsome livery. It's not given enough credit. And the round rail circuit with peripheral connecting tube station nodes into central London as an alternative to routing through the busy city centre offers Londoners a great option!
Gutter press leaderboard today: the Daily Repress, mouthpiece of right-wing ToryReform... 'Migrants Will Get Half of All New Homes' claims Chris Filth, shadow Home Secretary of ToryReform without providing any proof. God darn! Blow that whistle, dog, and let the truth of Cereberus eat you up alive!
'How could Sturgeon not know?' Well, duh! If hubby had a separate bank account why should she know? Tory / Reform press sh*t stirring again. The Daily Fail really is of the worst among the gutter press
It seems that while the British government expects Ukraine to make incredible sacrifices in the war against Putin's Russia, it isn't prepared itself to make even small sacrifices to punish the aggressor. Waivers on the import of refined products made of Russian oil are a slap in Ukraine's face