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Mary Curies

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

Review of Tracy Chevalier’s treatment of Mary Canning’s life, in Remarkable Creatures. — For Perspective

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged audiobooks, Bishop Usher, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Bullock's Egyptian Hall, Deshan Tennekoon, Dickens, Dissenters, Dorset, Elizabeth Philpot, fiction, Geological Society, history, International Women's Day, John Fowles, Lyme Regis, Mary Anning, men, Oxford University, palaeontology, Perspective, poverty, religion, Saxony, science, the Bible | Comments (0)

Strength and honour

Tuesday, May 12, 2020

A love letter to 20 years of watching Gladiator. — For The Critic

Filed in column, Journalism | Also tagged Academy Awards, Alain de Botton, army, Classics, Cleopatra, Commodus, Derek Jacobi, Djimon Hounsou, drink, Edward Gibbon, Facebook, Germans, Hans Zimmer, Harry Sidebottom, history, Holst, Jesus, Julius Caesar, Kent, Loeb Classical Library, love, Marcus Aurelius, Moravia, Morocco, music, Nick Cave, Odeon, Oxford, painting, religion, Rich Hardcastle, Ridley Scott, Rome, Royal Albert Hall, Russell Crowe, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain, Suffolk, Surrey, tattoos, The Critic, Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts, war, YouTube | Comments (0)

Master class

Sunday, October 27, 2019

An evening with Kumar Sangakkara. — For the Sri Lankan Sunday Times

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged charity, cheese, Council for Business with Britain, County Championship, cricket, Cricket World Cup, drink, education, Foundation of Goodness, geography, Great Britain, Heraclitus, HSBC, Kumar Sangakkara, Kushil Gunasekera, Lord's, Mark Prothero, Marylebone Cricket Club, parents, records, Seenigama, Shangri-La, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times (SL), Surrey | 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, death, engineering, 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)

Ivory-tower thinking

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Review of Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination, by Paul Dobraszczyk. — For Geographical

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged architecture, art, books, Geographical, non-fiction, Paul Dobraszczyk, Reaktion Books, Royal Geographical Society, slums, the future | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE #2

Thursday, November 15, 2018

The Spanish Inquisition, and other matters unexpectedly arising. — For Queen Mob’s Tea House

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Angola, anthems, Bosnia, Brazil, cricket, Croatia, De Selby, death, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, Fox News, France, Germany, Greece, Guinea, Guyana, Haiti, housing, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Laos, libraries, money, Mongolia, Nelson Evening Mail, Nepal, New Zealand, November, peace, Portugal, Queen Mob's Tea House, rainbows, religion, roosters, satire, Senegal, sex, sexting, Spain, Spike Lee, Switzerland, Tajikistan, the Forth Bridge, the Marseillaise, the Victorians, Tonbridge School, train-travel, Trinidad and Tobago, trousers, UK, Venezuela, writing, Yorkshire | Comments (0)

Did The English Patient send me to Afghanistan?

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Two nights from now, by way of (ahem) a birthday present, I will be attending a live-orchestra screening of The English Patient at the Albert Hall. I had invited an old friend, a raven-haired young lady (named in Debrett’s) of impossibly romantic tendency, who first exposed me to the film in, I’d say, about 1998 […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Also tagged Academy Awards, Afghanistan, Ahmed Hassanein, air travel, American University in Cairo, anatomy, Anthony Minghella, Arabic, army, Banana Republic, bedouin, Benny Goodman, Booker Prize, books, bookshops, Brighton, Bruce Chatwin, Byron, Canada, Charing Cross Road, Christopher Hitchens, clothing, Debrett's, deserts, Dorset, Egypt, Egyptology, exploration, French Foreign Legion, Gabriel Yared, Geoff Dyer, Geographical, Geographical Journal, Herodotus, Hungarian, Hungary, JM Coetzee, John Ball, John Hare, Joseph Conrad, Justin Marozzi, Kensington Gore, Kristen Scott Thomas, László Almásy, London, Long Range Desert Group, Lorenz Hart, love, Michael Ondaatje, mountains, music, novels, Orientalism, Oscar Wilde, Oxford, Picador, plums, Ralph Bagnold, Ralph Fiennes, Ranulph Fiennes, Richard Bermann, Robert Twigger, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Geographical Society, Saul Kelly, Sinai, SOE, song, South Africa, the Himalayas, the Nile, The Oldie, the Sahara, the Western Desert, war, WG Sebald, William Golding, wind, women, WW2, YouTube, Zerzura | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, March 12, 2018

. The average salary of professors at Dublin University is £530. — The Nelson Evening Mail, March 14 1907 . Wherever there is a fire that ravages everything in its path, the protea is the first thing to regenerate. Clive James once voluntarily interviewed the Spice Girls. Manchester has become ‘Womanchester’. Cineworld has landed in […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged academia, America, army, bowls, Cineworld, Clive James, domestic affairs, Donald Trump, drink, Dublin, education, Elon Musk, employment, engineering, finance, flora, Journalism, Kanye West, law, Manchester, music, Nelson Evening Mail, nomenclature, Oscar Wilde, pastry, retirement, South Africa, space travel, technology, the Congo, the Spice Girls, Um Bongo, university, Weston-super-Mare, women, work | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, February 19, 2018

. In China the dials of a clock turn round instead of the hands. — The Nelson Evening Mail, September 8 1908 . Benedict Cumberbatch reads Oryx magazine. A piece of pasta (dry) weighs essentially one gram. A man can only care about so many things. Labels are for clothes. In Bosnian there are no words for […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Benedict Cumberbatch, Bosnian, brothers, China, clothing, cows, Darryl Gerrity, death, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Englishmen, fiction, friends, grapes, Hawaii, health, horology, Islam, love, magazines, measurements, men, music, Nelson Evening Mail, non-fiction, pasta, pornography, Qatar Airways, Reading, religion, Russians, Virginia, white goods | Comments (2)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, December 25, 2017

. More than nine-tenths of the railway passengers in England travel third-class. — The Nelson Evening Mail, October 20 1906 . ‘The is cat washing dishes’ is an 18th-century expression for the reflection of water on the walls of a room. A skate’s vagina is anatomically similar to a woman’s. Just because a thing is true does not mean that […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged (il)literacy, 18th century, accommodation, age, anatomy, army, Batman, Ben Affleck, brothers, Canterbury, Casey Affleck, cats, Chartham, children, Christmas, de Lesseps, democracy, Die Hard, drink, Egypt, employment, fish, Italian, Nelson Evening Mail, paper, Roy William Scranton, sex, steel, Suez Crisis, Superman, Tennessee Williams, The Fratellis, the Soviet Union, train-travel, Truth, water, women, writers | Comments (0)