This morning’s Daily Telegraph carries an obituary for Spencer Davis, the musician who enjoyed considerable chart success in the 1960s. One of his achievements with his band the Spencer Davis Group was to knock The Beatles off the No 1 slot in January 1966 with the Jackie Edwards composed "Keep on Running". Initially, the Telegraph obit said that the Spencer Davis Group had kept The Beatles from the top slot. It is the word “kept” that had to be disputed. The Beatles were not “kept” from the No 1 slot. The Fab Four had been at the top of the charts with their double A-sided single "Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out" for five weeks so were probably due to start their downward trip out of the Top 20. Naturally, I wrote to the Telegraph to point out the incorrect use of the word “kept”. My concern was that anyone under a certain age - say 60 - might not realise that The Beatles went to No 1 with all their singles between 1963 and 1967, until Engelbert Hum
The Ypres Memorial at the Menin Gate, Flanders where the name of Lance Corporal Edward Cox is engraved Today is Remembrance Sunday, the day we commemorate the contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts. It also includes remembering all those from Ireland, even though the Republic is not part of the Commonwealth, who gave their lives. Some 210,000 Irishmen served in the British forces during World War One of which 35,000 were killed - a figure that rose to a final toll 50,000 due to wounds received. That is more than were in the GPO in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916 and even more than those who claimed to have been. (I’ve never found out why the post office was open on a bank holiday.) During World War Two when Ireland was a Free State, it was neutral. That didn’t stop some 50,000 men and women enlisting in the British forces to fight Hitler. (Sadly, a few misguided individuals took a view t
Dublin is one of the finest cities in the world. It has history going back more than 1,000 years. Sadly not all of that history has been preserved. To make matters worse, despite making people aware of the constant threat to Dublin, developers and other other Philistines keep attempting to rob the city of its history. In my lifetime we have had various rapes commited on the Irish capital with one of the worst being in the 1970s when Dublin Corporation attempted to build its new 20th century headquarters on top of a Viking settlement at Wood Quay. They succeeded up to a point. Now very little is left of Viking Dublin. Dublin suffers these outrages from time to time. A few months ago, developers bulldozed the Ballsbridge home of the only 1916 Rising leader to die in the rebellion, Michael Joseph O’Rahilly. Known as The O’Rahilly he lived at 40 Herbert Park and despite a fierce battle to prevent his home being demolished, the heathens got their way and the building was razed earl
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