The Latest

Newsreaders on the wireless have adopted a new phrase: “now for the latest … “ and there is a clip, and it isn’t necessarily live, from a sports venue, Westminster, Gaza, Kiev etc. Well, you won’t find the latest here.

Published
Categorised as Literature

Oriental Scenery

Earls Terrace is a terrace of twenty-five houses built in the first decade of the 19th century.

White Eagles

Olivia Manning took inspiration from her wartime service with the British Council in Bucharest for her Balkan Trilogy. Lawrence Durrell used his time with the British Council in Belgrade to write authoritatively about Yugoslavia in White Eagles Over Serbia.

Impeachment

When I was at school impeachment was synonymous with Warren Hastings.

The Today Programme

”A diary is an assassin’s cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen.” (William Soutar, 1898 – 1943, Scottish poet diarist and epigrammatist)

Father and Son

Ambrosio Bernardo O’Higgins y O’Higgins, 1st Marquess of Osorno (1720 – 1801) was born on the eastern shore of Lough Arrow in Sligo.

The Duke of Cumberland

“The Titles Deprivation Act (1917) is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom which authorised enemies of the United Kingdom during the First World War to be deprived of their British peerages and royal titles.”(Wikipedia)

The D’Israeli Column

I hadn’t heard of Edward Buckton Lamb (1806 – 1869), a Victorian architect called “a Rogue Gothic Revivalist” criticised by his contemporaries but in the 20th century Pevsner called him “the most original though certainly not the most accomplished architect of his day”. I have now seen two of his works.