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Tag Archives: school

On Commonwealth Day

… my diaries relate a (very positive) diplomatic incident from 15 years ago. — For The Emigre

Late-teen condenses Seamus Heaney

war/conflict/Troubles land modern history of Ireland personal identity religion rural landscape vs industrialisation loyalty to roots vs leaving silence vs talking place language: Gaelic, Anglo-Saxon, Latin, English farming vs academia invasion (poignant) .

NEWS AT A GLANCE

. The barnacles are scraped off British men-of-war twice a year..5 — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, September 6 1906 . Wicca is the fastest-growing religion in the UK after Islam. The Dutch term for a sex buddy is ‘seksbuddy’. George I and his prime minister conversed officially in dog Latin. Irish 6th-formers know what The Communist Manifesto is […]

Bleak Howzat!?— Charles Dickens pays a visit to The Cricket Club

(in loving memory of its former incarnation) . Colombo. The Galle and Pallakele matches lately over, the series lost, and the selectors falling back on Maitland Place in hopes of inspiration for the third and final test. The last of the erratic rains now gone, the water in the half-uncovered sewers stagnant, rank with garbage. […]

Creation-ism

This weekend I will be joining a local choral society for their performance of Haydn’s The Creation – and what better way to welcome Spring now that it’s finally arrived. An avowed and much-loved masterpiece from its earliest performances – Vienna, 1798 – ‘whose appeal [I read from A Peter Brown’s DECCA sleeve-notes] was irresistible […]

Interview(ed)

(for the British School in Colombo yearbook 2010/11) 1. So, what’s with the beard? After I graduated from the War Studies Faculty at KCL I rather fancied myself as a war correspondent, so I grew the beard. Then I just rather fancied myself. 2. We somehow get the impression that you are always very sarcastic […]

Temper, temper

How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) Ross W. Duffin W.W. Norton, £9.99, p196 . When William Gardiner lamented in 1832 that ‘the Deity seems to have left music in an unfinished state’ he was referring to a seeming paradox of tuning: if you start from C and keep adding fifths, twelve […]