Jack the Lad

Posted on by Frank Brinkley

Two days after John F Kennedy was shot in 1963, the headmaster of a Cambridge school at which I was teaching delivered such an impassioned threnody to the assembled pupils that he reduced many of them to tears. Especially moved by the fact that, like the president, he himself was a former naval officer aged […]

Tawk of the Town

Posted on by Frank Brinkley

You know how to have a polite conversation, right? You listen, wait for a pause, say your bit, then shut up so someone else can speak. In other words, you take your turn. You’re obviously not from New York. To an outsider, someone from, say, Toronto or Seattle or London, a conversation among New Yorkers may resemble a verbal wrestling match

Crocodile Diplomacy

Posted on by Frank Brinkley

In the autumn of 1960, Harlem would have struck few people as an obvious place to stay. Long famous as the heartland of black New York, the northern tip of Manhattan had an unenviable reputation for poverty, robbery and murder. Asthma, venereal disease and tuberculosis rates were shockingly high; the streets were full

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