As that virus plays havoc with hospitals and health workers the world over, I am guessing its impact on the world’s economy will be felt long after a vaccine is discovered. I often try to find similarities between current world events and those which took place in the history of
Surrounded by panic about the spread of Covid-19, what better way to spend an afternoon than researching my grandmother’s experience with disease during the Russian Revolution. I turned to her book, Upheaval, to find out how she was affected. She is not the best at recording dates, but I can
The Corona Virus, or COVID 19 as we are being told to call it, is everywhere. And when I say everywhere I mean reports of it are on every news channel and social media site. It is now officially a pandemic. Contagious by nature, the fear of it is contagious
Fear lurked in the background of my childhood. It was never named when I was a child but, as I grew older, I learnt its name was Communism. Both sides of my family feared Communists and especially Bolsheviks, with good reason. In her book, Upheaval, my grandmother wrote of traumatic
I love Berlin. I wish I could say, like JFK did, “ich bin ein Berliner”. Except I guess I would have to say “ich bin eine Berlinerin” as I am female – but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it. Perhaps a German speaker could enlighten me on
I was excited when I found several books at my local library on the Russian Revolution, including a few memoirs. I recently began to write a historical novel, set during the Russian Revolution and loosely based on the last couple of years of my maternal grandmother’s life. As some of