November 7th-13th

A particularly barren week in the interesting TV domain. Nothing new which sounds really interesting, but one repeat worth watching if haven't seen before:

World War Two: 1941 and the Man of Steel
13th Nov, BBC 4 9pm
the blurb: "Historian David Reynolds explores Josef Stalin's handling of the conflict between the Soviet Union and Germany during the Second World War. He reveals how the dictator's mental frailties nearly caused his country to fall to the Nazis in 1941 and examines the compromises he was forced to make to survive. He also investigates the events that led to Stalin eventually siding with the Allied powers, including Winston Churchill's 1942 visit to Moscow"

One amusing little nugget was that Stalin never lost his strong rural Georgian accent, which would probably have marked him out for ridicule in high russian society, if it hadn't belonged to a vicious and vengeful paranoic. The UK equivalent would seem to have been to hear angry despotic rhetoric delivered with a yorkshire accent. Oh aye Amos, will have nowt to do with them bourgois landlords, and will kill every last one of them.