A decade or so ago, all over the world, cinemas underwent one of those prince-into-frog mutations, and became, instead popcorn-restaurants, which offered the option of visual diversions for diners.

The International Brigade was not formed to protect freedom and democracy. It was founded as a tool of of the Comintern, to promote the interests of the Soviet Union - and thereby of Joseph Stalin, the butcher of millions. It made political sense for the International Brigade to recruit non-communists - useful fools was what Lenin had called such people in an earlier manipulation of gullible decency - but of course most were then vetted by the NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police.

The problem with popular thinking is that it doesn’t require you to think at all.

You can KNOW something yet FAIL to do it!

When the light has sharply faded And you have lost your way Let another's love guide you It can turn blackest night into day.

The divine harbinger of summer - warm rain.

Ten thousand officers and men named Smith died in the First World War. One thousand four hundred Campbells died, six thousand Joneses, and one thousand Murphys. Smith, Campbell, Jones and Murphy: the names of the United Kingdom, whose presence in regiments from all four countries speaks of the ebb and flow of peoples within these islands, of a common sacrifice, and a shared agony that burned in so many million hearts down the decades.