West Commerce Herald (Illustrated): Reporting a fast-moving world...slowly

    Boris Johnson - The Gambler Tom Bower W H Allen   Boris Johnson has led a colourful life and one would expect this biography to be a colourful read. It is. But as with the proverbial parson’s egg, it is and it isn’t. Tom Bower is an accomplished biographer with subjects such as Tony Blair, Richard Branson, Conrad (and Lady) Black and Robert Maxwell among his subjects. This book covers a lot of ground that with which we are already familiar.  His philandering is well known. So too is his fickle relationship with the truth. Even his days at Eton and Oxford with his membership of the Bullingham Club have been covered in the media before.   Where Bower comes up with fresh material is at the start (and the time before) of Johnson’s life. His childhood and the insecure family life. The other place where Bower scores is the in the present day. The author goes into great detail of the current Covid-19 crisis and before that Brexit.    Johnson has a need to be liked and (in some c

    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