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Rearview Mirror Chronicles
Keith Hockton, FRAS, is a writer, publisher, and award-winning podcaster based in Penang, Malaysia, with a deep passion for uncovering the stories that shaped our world. As the Southeast Asia Editor for International Living magazine, Keith explores the intersections of history, culture, and modern life across the region.
A dynamic lecturer and storyteller, he speaks internationally on Southeast Asian politics, economics, and history—bringing the past to life with clarity, wit, and insight. Keith is also a proud Fellow of The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland and is on a mission to make history not only accessible but genuinely entertaining for everyone.
His published books include:
• Atlas of Australian Dive Sites - Travellers Edition (Harper Collins Australia, 2003).
• Penang - An inside guide to its historic homes, buildings, monuments and parks (MPH Publishing, 2012; 2nd Edition 2014; 3rd Edition 2017).
• Festivals of Malaysia (Trafalgar Publishing, 2015).
• The Habitat Penang Hill: A pocket history (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Alana and the Secret Life of Trees at Night (Entrepot Publishing, 2018)
• Penang Then & Now: A Century of Change in Pictures (Entrepot Publishing, 2019; 2nd Edition 2021
• Bersama Lima - Five Together (Entrepot Publishing, 2022)
www.entrepotpublishing.com
Rearview Mirror Chronicles
Football in No Man’s Land: Christmas 1914
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In December 1914, in the frozen mud between the trenches, something astonishing happened.
The war paused.
On the Western Front, beneath a hard winter sky, British and German soldiers began to sing. First carols drifted across No Man’s Land. Then cautious voices answered. And then, in an act so simple it feels almost impossible, men climbed out of their trenches.
They shook hands. They exchanged cigarettes. They buried their dead.
And somewhere in that scarred, cratered wasteland, a football appeared.
This episode of Rearview Mirror Chronicles tells the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914, not as myth, not as sentiment, but as a moment of fragile humanity inside the machinery of industrial war. Who organised it, if anyone did? Was there really a match? And why did high command move so swiftly to ensure it never happened again?
For a few brief hours, enemies became players. The rifles fell silent. Boots struck a ball instead of the earth. And the war, just for Christmas, seemed to loosen its grip.
It is a story of mud, music, youth, and memory. And a reminder that even in the darkest winters of history, something stubbornly human survives.
For books written and published by Keith Hocton