In 1992, it was The End of History and we were “rockin’ in the free world.” But how did it happen? As Oliver Stone repeatedly demonstrates in his brilliant series The Untold History of the United States, key figures are important to diplomatic relations. By the late 1970s, the days of a trade union talisman…
The 1980s in which I grew up were dark days. The Conservative Party, having won the 1979 general election, dominated British politics, winning again in 1983, and beating Neil Kinnock’s Labour in both 1987 and 1992 before his party decided he was “unelectable.” Get used to that word. It gets thrown around with greater frequency…
This past spring’s British general election was pretty depressing stuff. After the Liberal Democrats sold out their principles to go into coalition with the Conservatives, aiding and abetting the Tories in their quest to exploit the bank bailout’s depletion of the Treasury in order to sell off the state, few of us believed there was…
Carrier pigeon. Snail mail. Telephone. Email. Facebook. One of those things is not like the others. That’s because one of them is less a form of a communication, more a private corporation by definition. Call me? Sure! Email me? Why not! You actually have a choice about which service you’ll use to do so. But…
Whenever I lived in North America and people asked me about Europe, I’d tell them that – as a Doncaster-born bloke living most of my adult life in Sheffield – I didn’t know all that much about the place. Then they’d remind me that my own beloved Britain was, after all, in Europe, and with…
When I was in kindergarten, I was very rarely found playing cops and robbers or war games. Instead – my mother today confirms – I was with my female friend at the time putting baby dolls into prams. Other mothers asked her if she was at all concerned about my behaviour. ‘Why would I be?’…
[UPDATE: Since this was first published, WWE and the Ultimate Warrior’s estate have erased most of the sources from his own website, as well as footage from YouTube. I will try to find the links in archives but they have gone to great pains to rewrite history – if you’ve read this post, you’ll know…
Each generation of professional wrestling fans seem to have the same nostalgic complaints as the last: pro wrestling, they claim, isn’t as good as it used to be. Either these fans long for when the business seemed more legitimate as Bruno Sammartino’s slow, deliberate grappling matches led to his historic seven-year WWWF World Championship reign,…
Read part one here. When Warners’ Batman brand was ready for reboot in 2005, things looked relatively promising: director Christopher Nolan was no slouch, and seemed to take the source material seriously enough, while he also brought in a host of skilled actors – Morgan Freeman, Rutger Hauer, Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, Liam…
What comic book character has been so enduringly popular as Batman for the last 70 years? After Superman, you’re hard pushed to think of one that comes even close – in almost every major ranking, Batman is right there, second only to “The Man of Steel” himself. Superman came about at a time of political…