Showing 1 - 10 of 15
Weapon of choice
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 25/04/2019
» In my army days, we were issued used M1 rifles. They were heavy and either had hair triggers or they had to be pulled way back before firing, by which time the target had moved.
Best of the best
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 16/02/2018
» Generations have their popular writers, but centuries' literary legends are few. Hugo and Tolstoy qualified, Hemingway and Grisham, Goethe and Dickens. Not to mention Shakespeare and Cervantes.
The 18-year itch
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 21/12/2017
» Contrary to poems and films, love isn't the only reason for marriage. Nor is it the strongest. Arranged marriage takes precedence. So does making the girl pregnant and doing the right thing. Indeed there's a list of reasons, not least lust -- the sap running in both the male and female.
Indian pirates
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 26/10/2017
» Pirates have been around as long as people travelled and traded by sea. A young Julius Caesar was among their prey two millennia ago. The fledgling US Navy pulverised those on the Barbary Coast two centuries ago. Still the pirates persevere -- from the Somali variety to those in the Pacific.
The Tudor women
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 03/03/2017
» So much has been written about England's Tudor dynasty that duplication is inevitable. Historians and historical novelists are hard put to find new angles. Henry VIII has been analysed every which way. There is no way of getting around the fact that he had six wives, ordering two to be decapitated.
Recognise yourself?
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 20/01/2017
» In this atomic-digital era, millennia-old mysteries are constantly being solved, but one will never be: How long will each of us live? Life insurance company mathematicians, pharmaceutical company chemists, astrologers, fortune-tellers et al are tackling it from different directions, none agreeing. Barring wars, epidemics and droughts, we are aware that we are living longer than our ancestors, women especially. The old are a "problem". The age of retirement is moving up around the world. How long before it reaches 70? Which lengthens the time for 20-year-olds to advance.
A British Don Juan
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 07/09/2015
» Brit Tom Watson -- good looking with pleasant personality -- is every woman's dream and he knows it, and steals their hearts. More to the point, he does so for sex. Then he drops each in turn as the next one falls into his arms. Yet even when discarded, they can't quite forget his words of love and keep coming back, humiliating themselves, wishing that he'd take up with them again.
Film version awaits
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 02/02/2015
» Arriving on the literary scene in 1990, American Patricia Cornwell has penned a book every year since. Though she hasn’t a medical degree, her crime novels that focus on forensic medicine are so accurate that she’s regarded as one of the experts in the field. With the profits from her writing, she has founded forensic facilities in more than one state.
It just happened
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 13/10/2014
» Exactly 100 years ago, World War I started. The spark that set it off was the assassination of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand, and his wife, on a visit to Serbia. The continent had had no major conflict since Napoleon Bonaparte's era, but Europe had since become an armed camp.
Mariner Murder Inc
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 31/03/2014
» Not the least difference between historians and well-researched historical novelists is that a historian feels obligated to dot every “i” and cross every “t”.