Category: Access

Please imagine two foes from the annals of history, say, Wellington and Napoleon, or a pair of ideological adversaries, like Burke and Robespierre.  Obviously there’s a whole ideological mythology trailing in the wake of each of these combatants, and to this day the world – whether it is conscious or oblivious of it – is divided between partisans of one or the other.  So, whether they know it or not, folks who opine that the European Union is a good thing for Europe are on Napoleon’s side; so 3.5 million Russian secret policemen endorse Robespierre, even if 3.4 million of...

I have known many rich people in my lifetime and had ample occasion to remark upon what seemed like an endless spiral of personal tragedies they invariably suffered.  As a Christian, I always found this unfair.  The rich are supposed to be thoughtless of God and careless of the salvation of their souls – with eternal anguish their likely posthumous lot – but here on earth their existence is meant to be cushy, replicating or evoking the serenity of paradise. Instead it looked like their future suffering unto eternity was merely a continuation of their present sorrows in this earthly...

The generosity of a friend, like a magic carpet, took me to Rome over the weekend, and I am glad to report that the best restaurant in the world is still there and still serves the best tripe.  Outside Italy, mastery over tripe is a useless yardstick of a chef’s eminence, since hardly anybody makes it, while a cook in England would probably get arrested if he dared to put the dish on the menu, containing as it does organic agents even more devastating to the human condition than gluten or traces of nuts.  On our blessed peninsula, however, tripe...

Everybody knows, however vaguely, that just before World War I, during his years in Vienna, Adolf Hitler made his living as a painter.  In Mein Kampf he recalled his hopes of attaining at least national renown, holding the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts responsible for eventually dashing them by denying him admission.  It is likewise remembered that the Viennese cafes where the epoch’s leading artists habitually gathered were frequented by the future dictator with a view to what today would be called networking.  In 1937, pictures by some of those artists were famously held up to ridicule in the Exhibition...