Celebrity Mastermind
Specialist subject: Laura Ingalls Wilder
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Tag Archives: 70s
The Iran hostage crisis, the Stasi and why the past cannot be left behind
I ate my first Passover Seder meal recently, as a guest of Rabbi Jonathan Romain at his synagogue. I had had the ingredients and their symbolic meaning on the seder table memorized since that sheet Miss Thick gave me to … Continue reading
Posted in Crime and Justice, Germany, History, Religion, Uncategorized
Tagged 70s, Holocaust, Iran, Iran hostage crisis, kindertransport, Obama, Passover, Stasi, Thomas Tsasz, US Embassy Tehran
4 Comments
Battling it out with the 70s & The Lamb’s Navy Rum Girl
My earliest registered nightmare (circa 1971): Coming downstairs in the dark to find the TV taken over by a ghost station, broadcasting horrors for the denizens of the night. I didn’t know then of course, that one day there would … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Film, Media
Tagged 70s, Caroline Munro, cinema, culture, feminism, film, James Hunt, Lamb's Navy Rum Girl, Linda Lovelace, media, On The Buses, Paul Raymond, Playboy Club, publishing
20 Comments
Concorde: How a dead end can be a glorious high point of innovation
1976 Paris-Rio First commercial Concorde flight to Brazil Photo: Jean-Claude Deutsch Paris Match I chose Concorde out of a 100 Great British Innovations for a National Museum project to mark National Science and Engineering Week. You can vote for it … Continue reading
Posted in Business/Economics, Design, Science, Travel
Tagged 70s, Concorde, Engineering, FTW
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Loving the Alien: Bowie and the ‘Burbs
How did I come to make a documentary for Radio 4 called I Dressed Ziggy Stardust? It was pitched and commissioned about 6 months ago, long before anyone thought Bowie might be releasing new … Continue reading
Posted in Children, Culture, Media, Music, TV, Uncategorized
Tagged 70s, aliens, Asian, Bowie, Bromley, FTW, immigration, London, suburbia, Ziggy Stardust
2 Comments
How The Middle East Became Another Planet
From Flash Gordon’s Ming the Merciless with his harem and his war rocket Ajax, to Frank Herbert’s prophecy-obsessed desert tribes in Dune battling over a valuable resource, the Middle East has always been another planet to western science fiction creators. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Culture, History, Politics, Religion, Science, Uncategorized
Tagged 70s, Arab Spring, Argo, books, cinema, culture, Egypt, film, Iran, literature, Planet of the Apes, politics, terrorism, war, zombies
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Triumph of the Eastern Will: How the Olympics came clean about winning
A version of this article originally appeared in The Big Issue Magazine By the time you read this a couple of weeks will have passed since the end of the London 2012 Games. The Paralympics are about to start. Politicians … Continue reading
Posted in Germany, Sport, Uncategorized
Tagged 70s, 80s, Anabolic steriods, communism, DDR, Doping, East Germany, elitism, FTW, GDR, Nadia Comeneci, Olga Korbut, Rebecca Adlington, Tom Daley, Ye Shiwen
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BBC Bush: The House at the Centre of the Globe
To mark the closing of BBC’s Bush House, which sends out its final broadcast today, this is an updated memoir of growing up there in the 70s. Bush House, Aldwych: The centre of the universe My mother, Lalita Ahmed, used to freelance … Continue reading
Posted in Culture, journalism, Media, Radio, Uncategorized
Tagged 70s, BBC, Bush House, culture, India, journalism
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Can we laugh about this? Race on film
I spent an hour with the Film Club charity in Battersea Park School in South London today,(I’m a trustee) discussing the treatment of race and racism on film. It was Anti-Racism Day, apparently. I chose clips from a sample of … Continue reading
Posted in Children, Comedy, Education, Film, Media, TV, Uncategorized
Tagged 50s, 60s, 70s, cinema, culture, Douglas Sirk, India, indians, Peter Sellers, sitcoms, Susan Kohner, terrorism, tv
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New York Fever: Strutting with Travolta
This is a talk I gave at the British Film Institute last night at the launch of a new book series on World Film Locations in major cities. The books pick 1 key scene and its locations from each film … Continue reading