Monthly Archives: July 2023

Searching for Private Martin

After decades of speculative stories, I finally found documentary evidence. The International Committee of the Red Cross have prisoner of war records from the First World War online, half a million files of information. At last, I had found Uncle … Continue reading

Posted in The stuff of daily life | 2 Comments

Meeting Sergeant Luxton

Albert Luxton died five years before I was born. When I was young, the 74 years of his life seemed to represent reasonable longevity, now he seems a man whose life was too short. He is a man I should … Continue reading

Posted in The stuff of daily life | Leave a comment

Wormwood

Aleister Crowley? You don’t expect the name of the old charlatan to crop up in an episode of Van der Valk. Twenty-First Century crime series don’t generally engage with the sort of pre-modern occult ideas propagated by a man dead … Continue reading

Posted in Out and about | Leave a comment