The Mirror Crack'd

The recent G7 meeting in Canada was scheduled to last three days, Donald Trump managed two. Of course, he pleaded the emerging crisis between Israel and Iran for only staying for two thirds of the meeting but everyone believed, rightly I'm sure, that Trump was bored and just wanted to get home as quickly as possible. He has a short attention span when the focus isn't all on him so having to share a platform with a group of second-rate so-called world leaders was bound to make him fractious. Collegiate is not a word in his lexicon. Besides which, despite his professed love for Canada (so great he wants it as his 51st state), being rusticated in a remote mountain lodge in Alberta is not his style at all. He's a metropolitan to his core, a New Yorker for Chrissakes, and the only grass he feels at home on, apart from the White House lawn, is the golf course - and then preferably one he owns. Someone once unkindly remarked that Canada is a great country, just not for the whole w...

By one of those strange quirks of fate today, Saturday 14 June 2025, sees two kings take the salute at military parades on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The first (titular) king, Charles III of the United Kingdom, celebrated his official birthday in London this morning with the traditional Trooping the Colour parade. The second (would-be) king, Donald J Trump II of the United States of America, celebrates his actual 79th birthday with a military parade in Washington DC later today. No doubt they'll compare notes when they meet in September - at least they'll have something to talk about since Charles doesn't play golf. Okay, so in reality Trump is an elected president not an hereditary monarch and the ostensible reason for the parade is not his birthday - a mere coincidence we're assured - but the 250th anniversary of the founding of the Continental Army in the Thirteen Colonies in 1775 under its commander-in-chief, George Washington. Many Americans, though, are far f...

Today is Friday the 13th, deemed by many to be an ill-omened date, but even those of us not of an overtly superstious disposition might, if honest, admit to harbouring one or two lingering irrationalities. According to the eminent Victorian clergyman and author, Charles Kingsley, "superstition is the child of fear, and fear is the child of ignorance". He wrote in an age that prided itself on scientific and technological rigour, where rational investigation and empirical research would banish benightedness from the world and liberate mankind from the shackles of craven terror. And yet he apparently saw no contradiction in being himself a devout Christian and a leading proponent of the cult of 'Muscular Christianity', so central to the success of Britain's imperial project. Kingsley would no doubt have been deeply shocked and offended by the suggestion that his own religious and political beliefs were themselves examples of irrationality, however sincerely-held and ...

Last October I covered the washout that was Spanish National Day in Madrid; to avoid a repeat, Spanish Armed Forces Day is being marked in the Canary Islands this weekend. The Canary Islands are a Spanish archipelago off the coast of West Africa so the weather can be pretty much relied upon to be clement at any time of year. But there is the added advantage, too, of their having two capitals to hedge all bets. Santa Cruz in Tenerife and Las Palmas in Gran Canaria share the honours of hosting the islands' parliament so it makes political, diplomatic and climatic sense to hold two parades, at least one of which is bound to be dry. There is also the bonus of having, in both cities, magnificent seaside settings for army, naval and air force displays. However, with a small but growing independence movement in the islands there is a danger of such junkets looking triumphalist. After all, the islands were conquered by the Spanish in the fifteenth century and the indigenous peoples enslave...

Sir Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 was composed in 1901 and a year later, at the urging of King Edward VII, lyrics were added by A C Benson to form the patriotic song, Land of Hope and Glory. This song, still belted out by fervid 'Promenaders' attending The Last Night of the Proms - the grand finale of a series of concerts given in London's Albert Hall every summer and broadcast by the BBC - encapsulates the very quintessence of Britain's imperial might at the apogee of her Empire. Its jingoistic sentiments allegedly gave Elgar himself misgivings but the King-Emperor's command could not be ignored. How have the mighty fallen. Unfortunately, though, Britain's 'great imperial project' - now viewed with embarrassment, if not shame, by many Brits - still has the power to inspire some of the world's less enlightened leaders with dreams of territorial aggrandisement. One only has to look at China's grip on the natural resources of ...

The newly-elected Pope Leo XIV is being acclaimed as 'the first American Pope' - er, not exactly... If one considers North America in general, and the United States in particular, as constituting 'America' then maybe this makes sense. But I know it drives the Hispanidad loco and I understand why - it's a classically arrogant Anglo-Saxon conceit. Okay, so Robert Prevost was born in Chicago, Illinois - and you don't get much more 'American' than that - but he spent most of his adult life in Peru and has joint Peruvian-American citizenship. His predecessor, Pope Francis, was technically the first American pope, being Argentinian, but apparently Latin America doesn't count, despite being settled by Europeans long before those regions north of Darién on the Isthmus of Panama. Donald Trump, the 'American' President, gushed on his Truth Central (sic) platform: “It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What excitement, and w...