BY ROGER WATSON An abiding memory of my grandfather’s house in Huntly, rural Aberdeenshire, was the barely audible chatter coming from his Philips transistor radio. The radio sat on a small table slightly behind the chair where he always sat at the fireside. If visitors arrived at the house, he would always turn down the volume on the transistor, but it rarely got turned off. … Continue reading Echoes of a Silent Dial
BY ROGER WATSON The sleek black Mercedes S350, summoned on my Uber app, drew up outside our hotel at Heathrow Airport minutes after I entered my request for a car to Terminal 5. Out popped a smartly dressed driver, beaming from ear to ear to assist with our luggage. The car was spacious, immaculate, and the journey was smooth. I detected an accent that was … Continue reading The City Speaks in Small Voices
BY ROGER WATSON What is the second most dangerous thing in the British Army? Answer: an officer with a gun. What is the most dangerous thing in the British Army? Answer: an officer with a map. During my short spell of military service, I never fired my gun in anger – only at a target on a firing range, but I did once prove the … Continue reading The Browning
BY ROGER WATSON There was a time, not so long ago, when crossing the Humber felt like an occasion. You approached the Humber Bridge with a certain ceremony, slowed your pace, fumbled for coins (or later, a card), and exchanged a nod, sometimes a word, with the attendant in the booth. It was not merely a crossing; it was a small, ritualised pause between the … Continue reading A Toll Tale
BY ROGER WATSON I cannot see many mothers being proud of this film. Mother’s Pride is a film which, given the cast, simply could not fail…yet it does. Heavily, and very misleadingly, trailered on television and promising so much, the film was a cross between cinematic fireworks – with too much going on – and a damp squib, with none of the fireworks exploding. The … Continue reading Mother’s Pride
BY ROGER WATSON To describe anywhere as a ‘hidden gem’ is becoming a cliché, in the same vein as describing someone as a ‘national treasure’. There are so many hidden gems and national treasures now that we struggle to find the words to describe those places and people who are neither. But, in the case of Saltmarshe Hall, both ‘hidden’ and ‘gem’ apply in equal … Continue reading Saltmarshe Hall
BY ROGER WATSON I finally made it. After more than twenty years of regular visits to Hong Kong: work trips; conferences; airport dashes; and copious social events, I crossed a threshold that had somehow eluded me all this time: the doors of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. That it took so long says less about any lack of curiosity and more about a persistent assumption that … Continue reading The Foreign Correspondents’ Club
BY ROGER WATSON Scoring a well-deserved 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, The Long Walk (2025) is the most dystopian of dystopian films. Written by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) the title describes the content of the film perfectly. Set in the 1970s and following a major war, the United States has become a military dictatorship. Morale in the country is poor and, to bolster it and … Continue reading The Long Walk
BY ROGER WATSON With a cast including Russell Crowe, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon and Richard E Grant you would expect Nuremberg (2025) to be good. And it is. The score of 70% on Rotten Tomatoes is less generous than it should be but that is from the panjandrums of the film critic industry. The score of 96% on the Popcornmeter of registered viewers seems nearer … Continue reading Nuremberg
BY ROGER WATSON Attracted to this film by the fact that Julia Roberts was playing the lead role, my wife and I snuggled down for two hours and eighteen minutes of entertainment. In the end all we got were two hours and eighteen minutes of our lives that we will never get back. Even if we did get them back, we would not relive them … Continue reading After the Hunt
BY ROGER WATSON If ever there was a film that deserved the subtitle ‘Or what the Hell is going on?’ it’s The Unholy Trinity (released in 2025 in the United States) which only scores 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. Starring Pierce Brosnan as the sheriff of Trinity in 1870s Montana and the ubiquitous Samuel L Jackson as a gun-toting preacher, it should have done better. The … Continue reading The Unholy Trinity
BY ROGER WATSON It is hard to believe that James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize-winning co-discoverer of DNA’s structure, has died at 97 years old. Yet, it is equally astonishing that he was still with us for so long, given that the double-helical structure of DNA was established in 1953—two years before I was born. I am 70 years old this month. My first degree, from … Continue reading James D. Watson: Double Helix and Double Standards
BY ROGER WATSON I have written previously in these pages about military matters: about my old regiment, the national memorial, and military accommodation. With the British Government having just announced a £9 billion package for the refurbishment of military housing, I want to return to that last topic. First, the scale of the refurbishment. By any standard, £9 billion is a huge amount of money, … Continue reading A Tale of Two Barracks
BY ROGER WATSON Just a ten-minute walk from the noise and tourists on Princes Street, on the fringes of Edinburgh’s New Town, sits a haven of tranquillity steeped in military history: The Royal Scots Club. I was introduced by a former military colleague and have been a lucky member for several years. Though I live a long way from Edinburgh, the Club has become my … Continue reading The Royal Scots Club
BY ROGER WATSON I have no doubt that many readers of CSM will already be familiar with the BBC Radio 4 sitcom Ed Reardon’s Week. I write this in the hope that I can point some others towards this excellent programme, which began in 2005 and ran its 16th series this year. The eponymous star, played by co-creator Christopher Douglas, is a grumpy, slightly misanthropic failed writer. He … Continue reading Ed Reardon’s Week
BY ROGER WATSON Of all the films I have watched, Straw is one of the most painful—but it is meant to be. The title presumably refers to the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Straw (2025) tells the story of a woman living in dire circumstances, whose situation escalates from terrible to tragic, ultimately breaking her. Janiyah Wiltkinson, portrayed powerfully by Taraji P. Henson, is a single mother … Continue reading Straw
BY ROGER WATSON Starring Bill Skarsgård and Anthony Hopkins, Locked (2025) is a comeuppance film where a petty thief and all-round streetwise lowlife suffers for his crimes – one crime in particular – in a fairly horrible way. Skarsgård, or Bill Istvan Günther Skarsgård, has appeared in a few films of note, none of which I have seen and in mainly minor roles. While I liked his … Continue reading Locked
BY THE EDITOR This is Part 2 of a two-part article that began yesterday. Part 1 can be read here. The situation escalated when Roger invited Bembers to his birthday party (ten years older than his actual age)—a milestone event that placed him squarely in what Bembers deemed “Bible John age territory.” For Bembers, this was the missing key. He launched a full-scale investigation, scouring … Continue reading A Memorandum on the Perils of a Gullible Mind (Part 2)
BY THE EDITOR As Editor of this esteemed publication, my duties are many and varied. I am a curator of fine prose, a guardian of grammatical fortitude, and a shepherd to a flock of writers who, while brilliant, occasionally possess the common sense of a startled pheasant. It is, therefore, paramount that my successor, the ever-keen Deputy Editor James ‘Bembers’ Bembridge, possesses a quality even … Continue reading A Memorandum on the Perils of a Gullible Mind (Part 1)
BY ROGER WATSON How to decolonise a university without returning the money The University of Edinburgh’s comedy show—aptly performed while the Fringe Festival is underway—continues. First, in June, they brought us the highest-paid Scottish vice-chancellor who does not know how much he is paid. Now they present us with a recently published report, Decolonised Transformations: Confronting the University of Edinburgh’s History and Legacies of Enslavement and … Continue reading Old College, New Guilt
