Skip to content

Tag Archives: New Zealand

Around the World in 384 Days

‘The Journal of Victor Emmanuel Smyth, made on a Voyage to Australia’ . Ever since I found a battered typescript in my parents’ house, about a decade back, at this time of year my thoughts quite often turn to Victor Emmanuel Smyth (1856-1947), the younger brother of my great-great-grandfather, who in 1875, set out on […]

A little less conservation…?

Wild Souls: Freedom and Flourishing in the Non-Human World by Emma Marris Bloomsbury £20 (hardback) . Stepping slightly sideways from where she left off in Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World, Emma Marris now turns her attention to a series of ‘exercises in practical philosophy’ on the ethics of humans versus(?) wild animals. From […]

Year’s mind

On South Africa’s historic 1995 Rugby World Cup win, its aftermath, and the sad death of James Terence Small . On Sunday morning, the first big international rugby fixture – All Blacks vs the Wallabies – was played since Covid halted the Six Nations back in early March. This will be followed by the other […]

The One That Got Away – Thusith Wijedoru

The Sri Lankan sports photographer talks about the greatest shot he never got… and one he did. — For the Sri Lankan Sunday Times

State of the nation

Review of Andrew Fidel Fernando’s debut book Upon a Sleepless Isle, which has just won Sri Lanka’s Gratiaen Prize (2019) for English-language literature. — For The Critic

NEWS AT A GLANCE #3

A little bit more idiocy from around the global village. — For Queen Mob’s Tea House

NEWS AT A GLANCE #2

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

All fact up

Trailer for the ‘new’ and ‘improved’, all-singing-no-dancing, NEWS AT A GLANCE – coming soon to a Queen Mob’s Tea House near you! — For Queen Mob’s Tea House

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. Last year 15,391 persons kept bees in this colony. The number of hives was 74,341. — The Nelson Evening Mail, April 10 1907 . It’s not every day a virgin conceives and bears a son. Indifference to facts is not confined to the alt-right and the hyper-liberal Left. The word ‘minge’ is of Romany extraction. […]

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. From the deepest pit we may see the stars. — The Nelson Evening Mail, August 28 1906 . Armadillos are incapable of irony. Greek prostitutes bill their clients in six-minute units. One of the stars of early-Nineties cult TV show Twin Peaks was called Suburbis Polaski. It is rarely useful to have studied Latin. A ‘wineglassful’ is an […]