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Tag Archives: Royal Navy

Antarctic adventure

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

From the submarine service to the world’s southernmost post office: Q&A with dentist Sally Owen, in the sub-Antarctic. — For The Critic

Filed in Journalism | Also tagged Antarctica, British Antarctic Survey, British Army, dentistry, Port Lockroy, Sally Owen, Stanley, The Critic, the Falklands, travel, UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, work | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, May 25, 2020

. 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 […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged carparks, crime, Dutch, employment, Fred C Trump, George I, Harvard, irony, Islam, Kalutara, Karl Marx, Latin, law, museums, Nations Trust Bank, Nelson Evening Mail, New York, news, politics, Port Said, property, religion, satire, school, seafood, sex, the British, the Irish, Unitarians, Utilitarians, Walter Rothschild, war, Wicca | Comments (0)

‘Beauty retire’ – or; Some notes on a portrait of Samuel Pepys

Monday, April 20, 2020

The odd (and possibly inconsequential) story of Pepys’s portrait, his song, and his relationship with Mrs Knepp. — For The Critic

Filed in feature, Journalism | Also tagged composition, Elizabeth Knepp, fire, friends, health, John Hayls, music, National Portrait Gallery, Oliver Cromwell, opera, Pelham Humfrey, portraits, Samuel Pepys, sex, singing, The Athenaeum, The Critic, the Royal Society, William Davenant, women | Comments (0)

A biographical note on Duncan Grant (apropos one of those Facebook challenges that do the rounds occasionally)

Monday, March 4, 2019

A weapons-grade Bloomsburyist, Duncan Grant (1885-1978) spent much of his early childhood in India (natch), where his grandfather had been Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. He ‘became interested in Japanese prints’ while still at prep school. After attending St Paul’s, Westminster School of Art and the Slade School – interspersed with stints in Italy and France, of […]

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged Abyssinia, art, Bengal, Bloomsbury, Clive Bell, David Garnett, Duncan Grant, fancy dress, France, Horace de Vere Cole, India, Italy, Leonard Woolf, painting, portraits, St Paul's Cathedral, St Paul's School, The Slade School, Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Westminster School of Art, WWI, WWII | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, November 27, 2017

. In the United Kingdom 200 out of every million persons are employed as writers or editors. — The Nelson Evening Mail, April 2 1907 . No-one has been found in a major search along the Torridge. ‘Pog mahone’ means ‘kiss my arse’, in Gaelic. Some people do not like to read instructions. In South Africa […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, Afrikaners, anatomy, death, demons, editors, employment, food, Gaelic, girlfriends, Hastings Banda, insects, Kilburn, kissing, lampposts, medicine, men, Nelson Evening Mail, painting, Peleliu, politics, Reading, rivers, slavery, South Africa, suicide, the Bible, the Nile, the Pacific Ocean, the Torridge, USMC, Vincent Van Gogh, war, writing, WW2, youth | Comments (0)

Luck of the Irish – two letters

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

I NAT. TEL. JESMOND 343. Imperial Hotel, Jesmond Road, Newcastle on Tyne 15th Dec 1907 . My dear Victor, …………………..It is my good fortune once more to ask you for your congratulations! This time it is on a very fine appointment as Navigating Officer of H.M.S. “Lord Nelson”, a battleship almost completed, and which is […]

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged Adrian Holt Smyth, Britain, brothers, Dublin, Dudley de Chair, Ireland, letters, marriage, Newcastle, the Thames, Victor Emmanuel Smyth, WW1 | Comments (0)

St Paul’s (Knightsbridge) and the Great War

Monday, November 10, 2014

A blog piece for Culture House on the Royal Naval mobilisation of the Rev Wilfrid Hannay Gibbins, and the parish mags of a church in West London over the course of the First World War. — For The Spectator

Filed in feature, Journalism | Also tagged Culture House, Knightsbridge, letters, London, religion, Spectator, war, Wilfrid Hannay Gibbins, WWI | Comments (0)

Afghan IV

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

for Frank Ledwidge, Lt Cmdr (Ret.), RNR I came. I saw. I concurred.

Filed in Non-fictions | Also tagged army, books, Frank Ledwidge, micro-non-fiction, notas bene, war | Comments (0)