© 2018 Greg & Sylvia RAY

Author: Greg Ray

This author has written 481 articles
Read more about the article James Fletcher, by Dulcie Hartley. Chapter 3

James Fletcher, by Dulcie Hartley. Chapter 3

My late friend and amateur historian Dulcie Hartley published several books during her lifetime, but one book she was very proud of never made it into print. This was her book about James Fletcher, Newcastle's famous "miners' advocate" - the only man in the city to be commemorated with a statue. Miner, politician and newspaper proprietor, Fletcher was immensely popular and influential, and Dulcie was fascinated by him. After Dulcie's death, her daughter Venessa entrusted me with the manuscript, and I have slowly transcribed it. Fletcher the employer and capitalist During the early 1870s James Fletcher…

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Read more about the article Childhood memories of The Newcastle Show

Childhood memories of The Newcastle Show

Newcastle Show, to me as a child in the 1960s, was an extravagant feast for the senses that marked it as one of the great highlights of the year. The smells, sounds, lights and crowds of the nighttime show made it seem to me like a magical town, with its streets and alleys and the big public square of the main ring. I drank in the excitement of the event with wide-eyed enthusiasm. The Show really seemed like a city to me – so huge, with so many different areas, each with an entirely different feel,…

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Read more about the article Watching a murder-suicide

Watching a murder-suicide

As soon as Israel made it clear that its goal, following the October 7 Hamas attack, was more or less a total purging of Gaza, that no two-state solution to its forever war against Palestinians would be countenanced and that there was no upper limit to the death and destruction it was willing to inflict, the words that sprang into my mind were “murder-suicide”. Somehow the assault on Gaza seemed of a type with other Israeli doctrines, like the “Hannibal directive” – where it is better to kill your own people than let them be taken…

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