The Texas heat has set in. Yesterday the mercury soared to 109 deg. F. (42 deg. C.). The sky is bleached white and blue, like the Greek flag. The heat, too, reminds me of Greece. I have fond memories, from longer ago than I care to admit, of sitting on a hotel balcony gazing at Heraklion’s Oriental rooftops incarnadined in the setting sun. And visiting the tomb of Nikos Kazantzakis on the city walls of Heraklion. The old wanderer’s epitaph is carved on his tombstone: : Δεν ελπίζω...

In advance of Ulster Yobbo Day, otherwise known as the Glorious Twelfth (of July), the yobboes, sure enough, are hard at work, just as they were when I was a resident of the Six Counties of Northern Ireland, lo these many years ago. Nothing better to do? Provoke the papists! (Or the prods! Turnabout's fair play.) In this case, putting up the banners of Protestant paramilitary groups outside a Catholic church and school. Oy veh. As Churchill observed, after World War II, in response to some co...

On 18 June 1940 Charles De Gaulle, a French general recently arrived in England made a speech in the studios of the BBC. He was grandly named but an obscure officer, ironically less well-known in his own army than in the Wehrmacht, whose tank commanders had studied his book Building a Career Army, in which he argued for a combination of tank and aircraft warfare that, had it been followed, might have pulled the French Army's chestnuts out of the fire. His speech, broadcast by the BBC but hear...