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Monthly Archives: September 2019

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. Football was a crime in England during the reign of Henry VIII. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, October 2 1906 . The moon is up for longer than the sun. Your antivirus expires in 29 days. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius are a work of incredible labour and compass. The steep limestone walls of a […]

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. John Stow, author of the Survey of London, was rewarded by James I with a licence to beg. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Friday, August 17 1906 . In Germany, young ladies have no sex. ‘Silver Billy’ Beldham was blond, and is said to have fathered 39 children. Thom Yorke’s left eye is made […]

Ducks and cover

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 […]

‘Bad in life, good in the book’

A Q&A with writer and artist Dan Richards. — For Geographical

Hit and miss

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 […]