I have finished The Quest for Queen Mary. There was one more especially enjoyable piece: James Pope-Hennessy’s visit to Copenhagen to meet Prince and Princess Axel of Denmark.
I enjoyed Hugo Vickers’ diaries written when he was writing Cecil Beaton’s biography (Malice in Wonderland) so it was just a step back of thirty years to James Pope-Hennessy’s diaries when he was writing Queen Mary’s biography.
If you read Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack or live in Wagga Wagga you will remember James (“Jim”) Higgs, OAM. He is a leg spinner who played for Australia in twenty-two Test matches. The late, great and lamented Murray Hedgcock would have known him.
An eclectic list of storm names chosen by the UK Met Office, Met Éireann and KNMI (The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute). So here’s something that hasn’t been effed up by Brexit.
This is what I saw yesterday at the top of the escalators on the first floor of Charing Cross Hospital. It was commissioned “for the benefit of elderly patients” and being one myself I drank it in, so to speak.
Many years ago I was instinctively anti hare-coursing. It seemed cruel to kill hares as a sport and there was plenty of polemic literature to reinforce my prejudice.