Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Friday, 10 July 2026

Death in Angola in 1976


This post is not concerned the usual type of things I write about, but I trust readers will indulge me.

It is a link to an article I wrote almost ten years ago about the fate of a group of British and American mercenaries who were captured and tried in Angola in 1976. Four of them were executed by firing squad in the football stadium in Luanda on this day fifty years ago. The trial and its aftermath caught my interest at the time and I researched the story years later for this blog.

I was surprised and gratified that some of the families if the men involved found it, and indeed found it a means of contacting others.

The unamended blog can be viewed at Judicial Murder Forty Years on

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