Authors Electric

  +Helen-Ann Hartley I suppose it was inevitable that media interest in the BBC’s removal of Masterchef presenter Gregg Wallace should so quickly supersede the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. About 5.4 million people tune in watch a Masterchef final whereas only 2 million are likely to attend Church of England Christmas services. And then Gregg gave that extra headline-grabbing gift with his outburst against the Middle-Class Women of a Certain Age who he blamed for bringing him down.   Kelly Webb-Lamb, founder and chief executive of Mothership Productions, wrote in Broadcast magazine, ‘ Can we all just think for a minute about what it means - in this industry - to be a “woman of a certain age”. If you’re still around, it means, that you had years, if not decades, of putting up with “banter”, lewd comments, and often much worse, and didn’t ever say anything because you wanted a good reputation and that next job.’ She goes on to list the difficulties encounte...

German ship losses WW1 I start this blog with two images and some disembodied faces . The first of the images are the roughcast concrete walls in the Laboe naval memorial on the Kieler Fiord.  There are two walls facing across the main chamber. They are slate-grey like an officer’s field uniform and crammed with the thick black outlines of sunken ships.  They record the Kaiserliche marine and K reigsmarine losses in two world wars. It was the diagrammatic aspect that I found chilling. It encouraged one to compare and contrast 11 U-Boote lost in the first war with 840 in the second. 46 Luftschiffe in the first, none in the second -- as if this was about technological change not human lives. The crammed outlines on the second wall were unforgettable. They represented 120,000 dead and missing men German ship losses WW2 Shipwrecks around the British Isles (all)  The second image may not exist. I imagine it is night and I can see the lights from a constant series of wreck b...