Cricket Fit For A King

It is early in the English summer and, thank goodness, the Test cricket season has started once again — and started with a bang!

England begins their season with a three-game series against Sri Lanka. England have always been heavily favoured to win the series since some of Sri Lanka’s best players have retired in recent years while England is solidly in form. But it was still a pleasant, nay glorious, surprise when we thrashed them so heavily in the first game that — with five days scheduled — we won today after just two and a half days (of which half a day was lost to rain).

Looks like we are in for a great summer!

Image: Library Exterior #6

Finally, The Blitz Ended

Today is the 75th anniversary of the end of the Blitz — the nightly attacks by the German Luftwaffe against London and Great Britain. It had been an extraordinarily awful and deadly period that so many civilians did not live through. And that wasn’t the end; the bombing attacks continued until 1945.

As those with direct memories of those events slip away (and as people even my age remember bomb sites as our play grounds), we are left with artifacts. Some of the best of these are the detailed maps the London County Council created after each raid, showing the damage across the city.  These are now available for view and study. They are an indelible reminder of what was and what was lost.