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Tag Archives: death

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 21, 2019

. The diamond, in sufficient heat, will burn like a piece of charcoal. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Saturday, November 17 1906 . Podcasts will soon be like porn. The first three volumes of TS Eliot’s letters have been remaindered. Confidence travels. The door is a jar. Roken is dodelijk. Humans’ rubbish is the filthiest stuff […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged apparel, books, dictionaries, elephants, firemen, food, football, geology, law, letters, murder, Nelson Evening Mail, news, podcasts, pornography, publishing, satire, smoking, travel, TS Eliot, Turkish, vegetarianism, violin, war, waste management, work | Comments (0)

Islamic cities

Thursday, October 10, 2019

Review of Justin Marozzi’s Islamic Empires: Fifteen Cities that Define a Civilization. — For Geographical

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Allen Lane, Arabs, architecture, Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, Constantinople, Cordoba, Damascus, Doha, Dubai, Geographical, history, Isfahan, Islam, Jerusalsm, Justin Marozzi, Kabul, Mecca, money, non-fiction, religion, Royal Geographical Society, Samarkand, travel, Tripoli, war | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, October 7, 2019

. The Paris Louvre is in future to be guarded by watch-dogs. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Monday, July 13 1908 . The human population has almost doubled since we landed on the Moon. Genital preferences are transphobic. The third umpire will have the final say on the snatch. It is against the rules to take a […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, anatomy, Argentina, babies, Bertha, business, cell-phones, chewing gum, coconuts, cricket, dogs, drink, education, Florence, German, girls, Greeks, history, humans, lambs, law, Nelson Evening Mail, newspapers, Paris, philosophy, satire, singing, Stalin, the Louvre, the moon, West Sussex, wisdom, writing | Comments (0)

Ducks and cover

Saturday, September 21, 2019

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann Galley Beggar Press, £14.99, pp1020 . Why, I asked some months back, in these pages, do the protagonists in American fiction these days seem so lost? What is it they’re all so het up about? Well… everything. At least according to the narrator of Ducks, Newburyport. Lucy Ellmann’s monster novel […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged 4th of July, actors, Americans, boarlets, Booker Prize, brandnames, burial mounds, clickbait, ducks, engineering, facts, first world problems, FOOSH injuries, Galley Beggar Press, geography, Gilbert & Sullivan, guns, health, homework, James Joyce, Laura Ingalls Wilder, lists, Lucy Ellmann, lyrics, memory, mothers, movies, names, Newburyport, novels, Ohio, Philip Glass, pies, presidents, Revere Ware, Schubert, Shakespeare, shopping, Spectator, styptic sticks, the Amish, the Midwest, trauma, Umberto Eco, wallpaper, women, wordplays, YouTube | Comments (0)

Hit and miss

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943 By Max Hastings William Collins £25 . By 1943, after nearly four years of war ‘ameliorated [only] by a thin gruel of successes,’ Britain and her western allies had little to boast in terms of their offensive victories; the lion’s share of the burden was very clearly being shouldered by […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Bomber Command, Dambusters, engineering, film, Germany, Guy Gibson, history, Max Hastings, non-fiction, RAF, Sir Arthur Harris, Sir Charles Portal, the Commonwealth, The Oldie, war, William Collins, WW2 | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 8, 2019

. On an average there is only one sudden death among women to eight among men. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, September 25 1906 . The Earl of Oxford did not write Fleabag. Hull is other people. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci chose to stick the with most ridiculous crap name that they could think of. Failure to […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged army, borscht, cars, Cúchulainn, Da Vinci, Facebook, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, horses, Hull, Justin Trudeau, men, Nelson Evening Mail, nomenclature, Ohio, Oxford, Russia, seafood, sex, space, The Incredible Hulk, TV, violin, women, yoga | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 1, 2019

. There are now about 54,000 Chinese coolies in the Transvaal gold mines. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, March 14 1907 . Los Angeles is a lousy, boring little town. A European could die there from boredom. January ain’t about the blues. Piers Morgan is sick. The veins of Englishmen flow with rainwater. In a land […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Andy Murray, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brexit, Cana, Chernobyl, crime, deer, Dominic Hilton, drink, Englishmen, Europeans, fathers, gold, health, hobbies, homosexuality, January, Los Angeles, marriage, men, money, Nelson Evening Mail, philosophy, Piers Morgan, rain, Sellafield, sex, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the Chinese, the West, women | Comments (0)

Extracts from the letters of Gerald Spence Smyth, Capt., 1st South African Irish Regt., Abyssinian campaign, 1941

Monday, February 25, 2019

6.2.41 I am given to understand that this is the 6th day of Feb. but for the life of me I don’t know what day of the week it is. Anyhow it doesn’t make any difference here. Excuse the dirt. A.A.¹ has just spilt some tea on my pad. The journey from the forest² to these […]

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged Abyssinia, Allan Arnott, biltong, Cape Point, censorship, Cyril Cochran, East Africa, Ethiopia, food, Gerald Fayle, Gerald Fayle Preston Smyth, Gerald Spence Smyth, infantry, Italians, letters, Mega, Micky Williamson, Muslims, Somalis, South Africa, South Africans, the Irish, war, WWII | Comments (0)

All good things must come to an end

Saturday, February 2, 2019

Some Trick: thirteen stories by Helen DeWitt New Directions, £22.95, pp.197 Certain American States by Catherine Lacey Granta, £12.99, pp.190 Hostages by Oisín Fagan Head of Zeus, £8.99, pp.269 Notes from the Fog by Ben Marcus Granta, £12.99, pp.266 The Abyss and Other Stories by Leonid Andreyev Alma Books, £8.99, pp.315 . Only Helen DeWitt […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Alien, Alma Books, Americans, Anglo-Irish, art, Ben Marcus, Berlin, Bertrand Russell, bombs, books, Britishness, Catherine Lacey, children, coffee, computers, Cotton Eye Joe, crucifixion, domestic affairs, footnotes, genius, Granta, handjobs, Head of Zeus, Helen DeWitt, humour, Ireland, Islam, Leon Wieseltier, Leonid Andreyev, linguistics, madness, maths, mental health, music, New Directions, New York, novels, Oisín Fagan, Oxford, painting, parents, plays, Poetry, publishing, revolution, Roy Keane, Russians, short stories, South Park, Spectator, terrorism, the Kaddish, Tolstoy, torture, WWI, xkcd | Comments (0)

This Is Just To Say – or; On a domestic argument between two writers

Sunday, December 9, 2018

‘After telling my wife about Boston’s Great Molasses Flood, she accused me of putting together a fake Wikipedia page, just to mess with her.’ — Navin Weeraratne . I had researched that story about the Great Molasses Flood which you were clearly hoping I had made up Forgive me it was pretty unbelievable so sweet and […]

Filed in Poetry | Also tagged Boston, disaster, floods, molasses, Navin Weeraratne, The Pikey Laureate, Thilani Samarasinha, Truth, Wikipedia, William Carlos Williams | Comments (0)