The trains in Spain race swiftly across the plain

Like most countries, Spain succumbed to the motor car a long time ago. Unlike, Britain, however, it did not give up long-distance travel by rail for travel by coach [bus].
Forty years ago, the rail network in Spain was very poor and the country backward by European standards. To visitors, that was one of its attractions, [...]

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Noir of the Week

I love the Noir of the Week website. This week they turn the spotlight on the Glass Key, based on a Dashiell Hammett story.
“All of the key components of noir are present in this film: a very definite crisis of patriarchy, strong willed femme fatales and a plot centered around an expose of a political [...]

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So much more than a vampire flick

I’m not a great horror fan but Swedish movie Let the right one in (Låt den rätte komma in, 2008) is an exceptional offering. The film has so many themes – including social alienation, the trials of puberty and adolescence, love, revenge and pedophilia – that you’ll be thinking about it long after you finish [...]

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Las Lajas finally has a decent hotel

My family and I love to spend time at the beach. By that I mean the simple pleasures: swimming, eating and sunbathing on unspoiled, largely empty beaches. The nearest long stretch of beach is at Las Lajas. That is about a one-hour (very pleasant) drive from David, now that the road is paved all the [...]

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CP Snow

Another writer who seems to have slipped through the cracks in recent decades is C. P. Snow. As a young man I read most of his Strangers and Brothers series of novels and recently watched the TV adaptation from 1983 for the first time. He was not a novelist of the first water but I [...]

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An interesting Hammer film

This movie shows how you don’t need a big budget to produce exciting, thought-provoking cinema. It was quite subversive for its time, but then it was directed by Joseph Losey.  Senator McCarthy did Britain a favor by forcing Losey to emigrate.
If the movie was very much rooted in its time, it still speaks to us [...]

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Organisation of American States decides to readmit Cuba

This piece of news was reported in today’s Guardian. It could mark a sea change in relations between the U.S. and the rest of the Americas and was, at the very least, a bold move by the Latin American governments.
Ironically, it was thanks to the Bush Administration’s treatment of the region that the Left found [...]

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The Global Peace Index

This year’s Global Peace Index has just been published. Not surprisingly, perhaps, New Zealand tops the list as the most peaceful country in the world, while Iraq brings up the rear (the Web page includes an explanation of the methodology used). Despite a sharp increase in crime over the past ten years or so, Costa [...]

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