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Purple Haze: remembering Jimi Hendrix
When we realised that our route back into Seattle at the end of our Washington State road trip would take us through Renton, just to the north of the city, there was one detour we just had to make.
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Cracking the code at Bletchley Park
The first computer my husband and I bought had a memory of around 500 MB. The second seemed a huge advancement at a whole gigabyte! Today I have 32 GB in my phone, i.e. 64 times as much, and 64 GB (128 times as much) in the memory cards I use in my cameras. And yet that first computer of…
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Getting our kicks in Santa Rosa, NM
As we approached Santa Rosa on Interstate 40 the heavens opened and for about ten minutes we drove through a downpour so heavy that it was almost impossible to see the road or any other vehicle on it – scary stuff. Maybe the elements were finding a way to punish the road that almost destroyed one of the most iconic…
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Gallery: cool architecture, cool colours
The most successful buildings are those in which form and function work in harmony. Buildings that not only look amazing but serve their purpose well. And also, buildings which reflect the culture of their location and contribute to it, rather than tug against it. The Louvre Abu Dhabi is one such building.
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Around the corner in Leipzig: die Runde Ecke
Leipzig’s Runde Ecke (‘Round Corner’) building was originally constructed for an insurance company in the early 20th century. But this attractive stone building was to assume a much darker role, and in time to play an important part in the history not just of this city but of the whole of Germany.
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The truth is out there: the Roswell Incident
Roswell would be a totally unremarkable town were it not for a single event - an event that quite possibly didn’t even happen, or at least not in the way that many believe it to have done. In the summer of 1947 a local man found some odd-looking debris on a ranch some 30 miles north of the town. Many…
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The USS Pueblo at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum
An elderly man in naval uniform sits on a bench in the museum grounds. He is eighty years old and is employed by the museum as a guide, although his main duty is simply posing with tourists. To the visiting North Koreans this man is a national hero; while to the relatively few tourists from further afield he is simply…
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Roots: dark history or tourist trap?
As our boat neared the jetty some village children ran to meet us. Whether in excitement at the break in the routine of the day, or in expectation that tourists meant tips, I wasn't sure - probably a mix of the two. I couldn't help but reflect how differently the boats docking here would have been greeted in the past.
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So who did start the Korean War?
History, they say, is told by the victors. But what if there are no victors? What if the war never technically ended? Then, perhaps, each side feels free to tell its own version of history, a version in which they were triumphant.
