It wasn’t the first time ‘realism’ hit the cinema screens. However, ‘On the Waterfront’ (1954) was the first major commercial and critical breakthrough of its kind. The very term – ‘social realism’ – was first coined in the fledgling Soviet Union, after the 1917 Russian Revolution, to describe such films as ‘October’, ‘Battleship […]

From walking in the air to the sound of a young Aled Jones, or starring in last year’s festive John Lewis advert, the UK cherishes the humble snowman as a symbol of the fun that can be had in despite low Winter temperatures. In Zürich it’s a bit different. Here, […]

The War and Peace show held at the Hop farm in Kent is the worlds largest military vehicle ‘festival’ and it doesn’t disappoint. I was five minutes early of my alarm this morning, an unusual scenario but one that was met by a fair amount of pride in the fact […]

Thatcher is dead. But ‘Thatcherism’ is very much alive. It’s embodied, not only in our present CONDEM coalition government as they hand out devastating cuts while further enriching the wealthy, but in the very heart of our body politic. In death, as in her lifetime, Margaret Thatcher has managed to divide the […]

From human rights to civil rights, an employee should know what they’re entitled to by law, whether that’s protection from discrimination or from torture. Your employment rights are no different. You’re entitled to the statutory minimum treatment, according to the government’s specifications. No employer can deprive you of these rights, […]

It was the battle that broke the back of the Nazi juggernaut sent hurtling East against the Soviet Union. After Stalingrad, Hitler’s armies were never again able to fully recover. The Third Reich was on the road to ruin. Seventy years ago, alongside the British and Commonwealth forces’ victory over Rommel’s Afrika […]

The other half and I went down to Greenwich the other day for a little outing marking our fourteen-month anniversary (yes, alright, we know we’re soppy).  Greenwich, for us as for a lot of the people of Britain, is one of the places that, even though the North-of-the-Riverers never venture […]

140 characters for your thoughts: welcome to twitter. Twitter began as a system of mobile phone text messages linking up to a larger internet network. On early mobile phones, 140 characters was the maximum limit allowed for a single text; hence, twitter’s character limit was set at this figure. So surely […]