Olivier Salad

Look at Wikipedia, actually don’t I have done it for you, and there is a long list of comestibles and drinks named after people. Only a few are familiar today: peach Melba, tournedos Rossini, beef Wellington, oysters Rockefeller, beef Carpaccio, omelette Arnold Bennett, Bellini cocktails and you will know others.

Arsène Lupin

It’s very muddling. Auguste Dupin and Arsène Lupin are both French gentlemen thieves (like Raffles and perhaps Simon Templar) created by Edgar Allen Poe and Maurice Leblanc respectively. Lupin has possibilities and there are plenty of short stories and novels, if I get hooked. Meanwhile, let’s start with the beginning of the first chapter of… Continue reading Arsène Lupin

Published
Categorised as Literature

The General’s Moustache

General Raymond E Lee is largely forgotten so just the man to be re-discovered. He doesn’t even have a Wikipedia entry, an omission that should be rectified. He was US Military Attaché in London in WW II. I have ordered his London Journal.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Blueberry Hill

More and more fruit and veg is grown in the UK. I wash foreign fruit because it is widely accepted the pickers piss on it. I don’t wash blueberries from Harry Hall’s farm in Surrey. I put them on yogurt and muesli most mornings.They are just about the only healthy food I eat; low in… Continue reading Blueberry Hill

Charlton Heston

This was made in 1954, shot on location in Machu Picchu, stars Charlton Heston and bears more than a passing resemblance to Raiders of the Lost Ark, made about quarter of a century later.

Burn, Sink or Destroy

John Bayley, Charlton Heston and William Waldegrave have something in common. They are all contributors to Patrick O’Brian – Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography. That gives a hint about the range of PO’Bs readers. The Hundred Days (1998), is the penultimate novel in the Aubrey/Maturin series. Here is how it opens.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Tallinn Museums

This is The Great Coastal Gate into the walled, medieval centre of Tallinn. Worth noting that at 10.00 am on a sunny, summer morning in July the city is not busy. First mentioned in 1359, this was the most important of the six gates (of which only two remain), being the main route from the… Continue reading Tallinn Museums