By Ray Bennett
LONDON – It’s no great surprise in London when your local Underground station is closed. It’s a creaky old system and there’s never enough money, so you shrug and start walking. But on Thursday morning, July 7 2005, Notting Hill Gate station was chained up and the guards were grim. “There’s been an explosion at Liverpool Street,” one said. “They think there might be more.”
There were. Four in all, killing 38.
On Wednesday, Trafalgar Square was giddy with people cheering and champagne corks popping as the news came through that the city had won the 2012 Olympic Games.
On Thursday, all you could hear were the sirens of police cars, ambulances and emergency vehicles. Most of London had gone to work as usual, even though it meant walking most of the way as first the Underground and then the buses stopped running. Continue reading
TV broadcaster Bill Moyers regarded the elite as the enemy
Veteran TV newsman Bill Moyers, former New York Newsday publisher and press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson, has died aged 91. As a broadcaster, he often spun off bestselling books from his TV productions and in 1989 he produced a documentary series with accompanying book titled ‘A World of Ideas’. I did a phone interview with him about it for a short-lived national U.S. magazine called Inside Books. I admired Moyers greatly and I was extremely pleased after my story was published when he wrote to say: ‘I don’t know how you managed to get in so much detail so accurately from a phone interview but I am very impressed and grateful.’
Here’s the story:
Bill Moyers talks candidly with Ray Bennett Continue reading →