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Tag Archives: death

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, September 21, 2020

. Forty Popes have lived less than a year after their election. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Friday, January 18 1907 . Ethiopia has exported its first avocados by train. The Communist Party banned photocopiers. More geese than swans now live. In Brazil there is a butterfly that uses its legs for running. All Pakistani […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Alastair Cook, beer, birds, Brazil, butterflies, Cecil Court, class, coats, Communism, cricket, elections, Ethiopia, fruit, Great Britain, Nelson Evening Mail, news, Pakistan, photocopiers, religion, Saracens, satire, sealioning, Sir Paul McCartney, The Beatles, the internet, train-travel, William Huskisson | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, August 24, 2020

. The Challenger voyage report is in 48 volumes, which weigh over 400lb. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, November 22 1906 . In the Republic of Cameroon Guinness is thought to be an aphrodisiac. A search for ‘fat naked German man chasing pig’ did not match any image results. Bernard Lout was buried in […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged apparel, Bernard Lout, books, bookshelves, Cameroon, Challenger, Chrysippus, emus, England, finance, food, France, Germans, government, Greeks, Guinness, humour, machine guns, Nelson Evening Mail, news, nudity, pigs, quizzes, satire, science, sex, Testudines, the Falklands, the internet, vocabulary, Warren Buffett | Comments (0)

The One That Got Away – Kesara Ratnavibhushana

Sunday, June 28, 2020

The Sri Lankan artist and photographer talks about the greatest shot he never got… and one he did. — For the Sri Lankan Sunday Times

Filed in column, interview, Journalism | Also tagged Aishwarya Rai, architecture, Arthur C Clarke, Barbara Sansoni, canals, Canning Town, Chamber Music Society of Colombo, CHOGM, fire, Galle Literary Festival, Geoffrey Bawa, India, Keir Hardie, Kesara Ratnavibhushana, London, Mahela Jayawardene, photography, police, Pune, reportage, SHUNT, Sunday Times (SL), weddings | Comments (0)

Quaker lives matter

Friday, June 5, 2020

A tribute to my somewhat improbable Quaker ancestors, murdered/martyred on this day, at Scullabogue, in 1798. — For The Critic

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Beauchamp Bagenal Harvey, crime, Daniel Gahan, Dr Thomas Hancock, family, George Cruickshank, Ireland, James Joyce, John Jones, Kilbraney, New Ross, Oliver Cromwell, Quakerism, religion, RF Foster, Samuel Jones, Scullabogue, The Critic, Thomas Cloney, Thomas Keightley, Tom Dunne, Ulster, United Irishmen, Wexford | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, May 11, 2020

. One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Wednesday, August 29 1906 . Globalisation is going into reverse. The (great) auk became extinct because he forgot how to fly. Your underpants contain cellulose. In the medieval period, walking through a labyrinth or […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Africa, aristocracy, auks, Australia, chemistry, clothing, crime, diamonds, Europe, fear, genealogy, globalisation, Greenland, Herodotus, history, hunting, Jeff Bezos, Jerusalem, keyboards, labyrinths, money, Nelson Evening Mail, poker, satire, the Bible, the Koran, walking | Comments (0)

The Pelican

Saturday, April 25, 2020

Or; Some Further Notes Towards the Bestiary To the researches of the antiquary and scholar Jorge Luis ‘Vintage’ Borges, a few points offer further context on that most peripatetic of birds in this, our present century. . Learned reports come from South Asia, where the spotted-bill Filipino pelican (phillipensis) is found, with no small irony, only in Cambodia, the Indian peninsular, and in Sri Lanka (or the contemporary […]

Filed in Fictions | Also tagged America, animals, army, babies, basketball, Borges, British Library, Cambodia, Captain Scott, children, Colombo, Corpus Christi College, daughters, Egypt, employment, fables, food, Gartagena, General John Guise, Hebrew, hieroglyphs, Horapollo, India, Jesuits, John Grisham, Joseph Hall, King Lear, murder, oil, pelican, Post-modern Bestiary, psychology, Roald Dahl, Spain, Sri Lanka, St James's Palace, St James's Park, St Jerome, stupidity, the Bible, The Spectator, Thomas Aquinas, US Supreme Court | Comments (0)

‘It is the living we should fear’

Sunday, March 29, 2020

DISCLAIMER: Ten years ago, I reviewed Shehan Karunatilaka’s debut novel, Chinaman, for this newspaper. It was brilliant, I said, and everyone should buy it. I noted, though, for form’s sake, that I’d done some light proofreading of the manuscript, and hoped that this would not be taken either as cause or symptom of inoperable bias. […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged BBC, children, Colombo, Commonwealth Book Prize, cousins, cricket, DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, Elvis Presley, Gratiaen Award, Herodotus, independence, Marlon James, Marxism, Michael Ondaatje, Nietzsche, novels, Oscar Wilde, pangolins, Penguin India, photography, Richard de Zoysa, Shehan Karunatilaka, Singlish, Sinhala, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times (SL), The Mahavamsa, The Matrix, war, Wisden | Comments (0)

Selassie come home

Thursday, February 6, 2020

The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste Canongate, £16.99, pp. 428 . In 1935 the troops of Benito Mussolini’s sinister-clownish Roman Empire II invaded Ethiopia, in large part out of spite for Italy’s embarrassing defeat there 40 years before. Initially largely uncontested – thanks both to emperor Haile Selassie’s desperate faith in international brotherhood and to […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Abysinnia, Adwa, Andy McNab, Canongate, dragons, Ethiopia, fiction, gas, Haile Selassie, history, Homer, Italians, Maaza Mengiste, Mussolini, photography, sex, the Bible, the Derg, The Spectator, Verdi, war, women, WW2 | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, November 4, 2019

. The Government of India collects about £7,000,000 from the sale of opium. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, July 19 1906 . Jacob Zuma is the only black South African president never to lift the rugby world cup. At Morrisons, your opinion gets rewarded with a £500 voucher. Vegetarianism, which is based on false hypotheses and ideas, […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged basketball, blindness, Canada, CENS, children, construction, cookies, democracy, drugs, Dublin Zoo, fathers, fruit, government, India, Jacob Zuma, lions, Mahler, money, Morrisons, Necessity, Nelson Evening Mail, news, philosophy, property, Rugby World Cup 2019, satire, sex, South Africa, the Soviet Union, trees, vegetarianism, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 28, 2019

. During one year a high police official in New York was offered £120,000 in bribes to “look the other way.” — The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, June 22 1909 . The night is chilly to a man without clothes. You get a free tote bag if you subscribe to almost anything. Sussex folk have few superstitions. There […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Americans, bags, books, clothing, cricket, crime, elephants, garlic, Glasgow University, international affairs, mental health, monarchy, money, Nelson Evening Mail, news, Pocahontas, rabies, religion, satire, sex, sleep, Sussex, the English, the Irish, the Lonely Planet, Thomas Mann, towns, travel, trees, weather | Comments (0)