19 St. James St, London SWIA IES

This is the oldest cigar shop in the U.K., going back over 200 years. Located just around the corner from Jerymn St., the hearth of London’s fashion district for men, it has a full selection of excellent cigars and pip tobaccos. One real treat is their museum where you can sit in a chair used by Winston Churchill when he would come by for a cigar, or you can view the order book where you find that Oscar Wilde never paid his bill or that Churchill gave an order for cigars for a relative (good cigars but not that good, after all, Winston did have to watch his funds). Upstairs you can enjoy a cigar (sorry, no cognac or hard liquor) and you are liable to meet some very interesting individuals. Visiting Fox is a step back in history that if fun and educational. Watch this video for a good overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uorb182UhH4

History is replete with lost wars, often caused by rivalries between top decision makers over strategies, type of munitions, tactics, and of course, political turf wars.  It is refreshing to read a book which outlines how five different men, all driven (by patriotism, some also by glory) managed to create the most powerful navy in the history of the world and use it in a manner which contributed to the total victory over the forces of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.  As the book focuses on these five men, the actions of the hundreds of thousands who served under them and were at the “sharp end of the stick” are not covered, but one is struck by the force of their personalities and how those personalities much have inspired many of those lower down the ladder.

11 Knightsbridge, London

855-407-6644

The Wellesley, a smaller high end hotel is only a few blocks from Harrods, so it can be a great place to escape after the crowds in the store.

How was it that under a regime which introduced radio on a mass scale to the average family, that pioneered the Americanization of political campaigning in Europe and that openly encouraged the average citizen to at least boycott their Jewish neighbors, how could the average citizen claim ignorance of the actions of the Nazi regime?  The regime made no secret of its ideology nor of most of its methods and yet, even in the period leading up to the start of the war, yet after the war, people claimed that they did not know what was happening right before their eyes.

I am sure that there are those who will applaud the action of the “greenies” and “indigenous peoples”, but they have to be individuals who are totally devoid of common sense. At a certain point, any business will simply say, “no more” and take their money and jobs and go elsewhere. The people who get them to do that are often the same ones who cry about lack of opportunity, never realizing that they are killing their own future. What a shame, too bad for Canada. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/diane-francis-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-canadas-high-living-standards

150 Piccadilly

Monday-Sunday 10am-11pm

Located next to the Rivoli Bar, this attractive room offers the weary shopper or businessman a comfortable shelter from the craziness that can be London. Aside from an excellent humidor with all the top Cuban cigars, they also offer a line of Ritz cigars which are hand rolled in the Dominican Republic using tobaccos from Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

Considered Thomas Mann’s first great novel for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1929. It traces the decline of a North German family which has been engaged in the export grain business for several generations.  Like all families, this family has its share of fools, marriage missteps, successes, dreams, individual failures, good and bad luck.  We follow one generation, the last of this family from the very summit of their success to their extinction. Are they bad or evil people?  Do they lie or cheat in personal or business relationships?  No, but none the less, they begin a descent which cannot be stopped and their line withers and stops in the most ordinary of ways.

When Manchester was diagnosed with the illness that would eventually kill him, he took time off from his work on the third volume of Winston Churchill’s life (the volume was eventually completed by another author after Manchester died but it met with lukewarm reviews).  Manchester admits that he started this book based on a fellow authors request for Manchester to write the preface to a history on Magellan, but he found the subject so engrossing that he expanded the preface into this work.  He also admits that he started the book with poor knowledge of the subject which led him to write in an entirely different manner, almost as if he were a graduate student working on his thesis.  He was especially careful of sources and consulted noted historians who specialized in the time period for their input and feedback.

Nedrasov who fought as a sapper in the trenches of Stalingrad does not present a sweeping, patriotic novel of individual bravery, but rather a story of small episodes where individual soldiers flit in and out of the main characters life during the battle.  Some are brave, some are stupid, some seek to earn medals while others wait for their end. 

There are numerous books written mostly by officers of Napoleon’s campaign in Russia, but this one, told by an NCO of the Imperial Guard, is, in my opinion, one of the very best.  Sergeant Bourgogne had campaigned with Napoleon for several years and he describes the retreat from Moscow in terms which are not sensational but rather in terms which brings the reader into the very action of which he writes.  You can feel his hunger and his cold, the pain he feels for comrades left behind and the joy as others long thought of as dead, are found.