Showing 1 - 10 of 37
Friends and enemies
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 22/11/2019
» People have friends and enemies -- fair-weather and true friends, run-of-the-mill and mortal enemies. It takes an emergency to sort them out.
The end is nigh
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 28/03/2019
» It has been determined that we've been around for 4.5 billion years, Earth the only habitable planet in the solar system.
Isis foiled
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 15/02/2019
» Until a few years ago, no Western publisher dared say a word against Isis, the Muslim terrorist extremists infamous for taking umbridge and reacting violently. No longer. Isis is now targeted by the media and by novelists with impunity.
Banks grows on you
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 17/08/2018
» It's a relief to read a crime thriller that doesn't bill itself as a psychological mystery. Frankly I'm not an armchair psychologist, much less psychiatrist. I much prefer simple -- what you see is what you get -- people to complex -- you don't know the real me.
Food for thought
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 05/01/2018
» A corporal motorcycle courier on the Western Front during World War I, Hitler fancied himself the German Napoleon Bonaparte. While he had good political instincts, a military genius he was not. Still, he had several first-rate strategists and tacticians on his staff.
A shrink seductress
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 20/10/2017
» It is said that men are potential rapists and women are potential prostitutes. What is not said is there are more than a few exceptions to this rule. Perhaps more accurately, they mentally undress one another when they meet, or in passing. And who says men have the stronger libidos?
The Dark Ages
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 08/09/2017
» I was taught that the Roman Empire fell to the barbarians in 476 AD. My next grade teacher was vague. There were the Dark Ages, Medieval times and Middle Ages. I heard the word Byzantine only once, when the Turks captured Constantinople in 1455 AD. The Crusades took place halfway between.
Vatican thriller
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 25/08/2017
» Christianity hasn't been around long, its two millennia shorter than Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism. The God-Mary match captured the public's imagination and Holy Mother Church has been matched with God ever since. It survived its encounters with the Saracens and the Reformation, and now has an estimated following of 1 billion.
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.