Tag: September

Stain-Glass Window Exhibition - 2025

Sutton: St Nicholas Church – Stones & Stained Glass Exhibition! (8.9.2025)

Sutton is now part of Greater (South-West) London (formerly East Surrey) – and Churches are viewed (rightly or wrongly) as a type of museum, although I think St Nicholas is still in use despite Church attendance being very small across the UK. Our view (as non-Christians) is that these places should be properly and respectfully preserved – and the faithful be allowed to worship in them. On the other hand, as the Church of England is funded through general taxation (regardless as to whether the worker is Christian or not) – ALL people (providing the behave) should be able to frequent the building. We also love the squirrels, pigeons, rats, and mice which live in the graveyard.

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Horton Street - lewisham - East London

Lewisham: Locating the Now Lost “Horton Street”! (25.11.2023)

During September, 1940, Nazi Germany unleashed its ‘Blitz’ attack on London! The Luftwaffe dropped thousands of tonnes of bombs on East London – as Hitler sought to destroy the physical bodies of the British working-class (thus preventing them from joining the British Arm Forces) – and to destroy the morale of those who were left! Not only this, by bombing various targets in the UK – using conventional Bomber-Aeroplanes and unconventional Flying Bombs (the fabled ‘V’ or ‘Vengeance’ weapons) Hitler attempted to rip the infrastructure of the UK from beneath the feet of its inhabitants! In the 18 months of intense blanket-bombing – a tactic Hitler had perfected in Spain during the Civil War (1936-1939) in that country – around 70,000 British people were killed!

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Imperial War Museum: How a WWII British Anderson Shelter Saved the Lives of My Family! (26.10.2023)

There were different types of government-provided air-raid shelters issued during WWII. However, the version depicted here – is very close to that issued to my mother’s family (surnamed ‘Gibson’) who lived in Lewisham, South London. During September, 1940, the Nazi Germany ‘Luftwaffe’ blanket-bombed East London and killed and wound thousands of British people. During the entire 18-months of the ‘Blitz’ – the Luftwaffe inflicted 40,000 casualties in London and 70,000 all across the UK! My family lived in a three-storied house in Fordyce Road – with a generation living on each floor.

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Yelnya: The Soviet Red Army and the First European Defeat Inflicted Upon Nazi Germany During WWII! (18.3.2023) 

‘Nevertheless, the fact that Russia had “allies” – or rather, one major ally, Britain – and that America was going to “help” was of some psychological importance to the Russians, they did not feel entirely alone, and soon after the invasion the thought had become deeply ingrained that the war would be won, no matter how terrible and how long it was. Much was, of course, made of minor military successes, such as the slowing-down of the blitzkrieg at Smolensk (which, curiously, created for several weeks almost a feeling of euphoria, at least in Moscow), and of the small Russian counter-offensive at Yelnya, south of Smolensk in September 1941, when a few hundred square miles were recaptured from the Germans – the first to be recaptured anywhere in Europe since the beginning of the Second World War. At that time, in bombed and half-devastated Vyazna, the future Marshal V. D. Sokolovsky made to the foreign press the significant remark that, fearful as the war was, the Russians were “gradually grinding down” the German war machine, and that in any case Moscow would not be lost.’

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