Showing 21 - 30 of 34
Clancy’s swan song
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 12/05/2014
» While death and taxes remain the same, all else changes. People are fickle. Fashion lasts for, at the most, long as opposed to short periods of time. Men wore beards and powdered wigs. Women’s hair was 30cm high and fitted into bustles. Court dancing became ragtime. Film studios used to turn out Westerns and musicals by the hundreds. Today, neither are popular.
An honest lawyer
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 17/02/2014
» Truth be told — I’m a sucker for courtroom dramas. Inherit The Wind, Witness For The Prosecution and Judgement At Nuremberg are my all-time favourites. Some courtroom novels or plays are adapted to the screen, others made into movies or television shows. Many remain in book form.
A plausible 'what if?'
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 09/12/2013
» A game played by children as well as adult boffins is "what if?" The possibilities are as wide as the imagination. It's fun thinking about things being different than they are. What if I found a million dollars? What if I found the cure to cancer? What if I could read your mind? What if, tragically, Hitler had won World War II.
The road to happiness
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 23/12/2013
» Happy New Year. Happy Birthday. Come on, let's get happy. Happy days are here again. And they lived happily ever after. It is part of the language. But what is happiness? Were we born with it? Is it taught to us? How do we know when we've got it? How do we keep it?
Portrait of an artist
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 28/10/2013
» Though "paradise" is a common term, it has different definitions. In James Hilton's Lost Horizon it is a land tucked away in the Himalayas where the inhabitants never grow old. To New Yorkers caught up in two rush-hours a day it is sunny Florida. To wet Londoners, Spain's Costa del Sol. Hawaii and the French Riviera qualify.
Guilty husbands
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 10/06/2013
» Prolific author James Patterson turns out a minimum of two novels a year, either on his own or with someone from his stable of co-authors. His speciality is crime fiction, and his literary creations include several sleuths _ police detectives and private eyes. Popular characters are repeated. For those that don't catch on, it's a one-off.
A winged ransom
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 24/12/2012
» This reviewer admits to not knowing the differences between Medieval times and the Middle Ages, hawks and falcons. So I use them interchangeably, my apologies to semanticists. Over the years. I've found that I'm not the only one. Take Brit Robert Lyndon, a falconer, who titled his historical novel about them Hawk Quest.
India in the making
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 03/12/2012
» During my backpacking years back yonder, I found myself in Fatehpur Sikri on the subcontinent. A palatial city, the odd thing about it was that it was deserted save for vendors at the entrances. Answering my question in English, one vendor said that it had been built by the Moghul Emperor Akbar, who then abandoned it because it had no water supply.
More terrorist outrages
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 10/09/2012
» Arab terrorists again, this time from Yemen. Osama bin Loony has come and gone, but his legacy of hate and destruction lingers on. What next after the outrage of 9/11? America again or some distant land? The world awaits the blow with trepidation. And with what weapon: chemical, biological, radiological?
Abusers need killing
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 02/07/2012
» There is a saying: "Some people deserve dying." Cynical. Heartless. Yet not without more than a grain of truth. Child abusers for one. Wife beaters for another. Not to say terrorists, white slavers and human organ stealers. Do prison terms pay for their crimes? Not according to their victims.