—
For The Critic

— 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 called.

Right-wing New York slumlord Fred C. Trump’s middle name was ‘Christ’.

The stranded prawn is in danger of dying out.

Nations Trust Bank is now in Kalutara.

Those whose bunks are in Port Said suffer the worst.

Walter Rothschild opened his first museum when he was 10.

A garbage man is much cheaper to hire than a dirty magistrate.

Plenty of Unitarians were also Utilitarians.

There is no longer room to park a car in Harvard Yard.

Irony don’t care if you’re a fan or not.
.

—
For The Critic

After attending St Paul’s, Westminster School of Art and the Slade School – interspersed with stints in Italy and France, of course – he received high-profile commissions to redecorate the Borough Poly dining room, the First Class lounge of Cunard’s RMS Queen Mary (torn out as soon as the directors saw it), and the Russell Chantry of Lincoln Cathedral, where he calmly cast his lover in the role of Jesus.

As a conscientious objector during WWI, Grant took himself off to Suffolk for a spot of fruit-farming (not a euphemism). In WWII, the War Artists’ Advisory Committee hired him to paint St Paul’s Cathedral (small picture of).

Per Bloomsbury, almost anyone who wasn’t directly related to him was having sex with him. This included Vanessa Bell (née Stephen), a woman, with whom he fathered a child and lived, fairly consistently, for more than 40 years. Their progeny, Angelica, later married David Garnett – the former lover of both her father and Vanessa’s husband Clive Bell.

A maid once told Virginia Stephen (later Woolf) “that Mr Grant gets in everywhere.” This famously included the flagship of the Home Fleet, HMS Dreadnought, when Grant, the Stephens, Horace de Vere Cole (I know, I know) et al. dressed up as Abyssinian royalty and were given an escorted tour, complete with marching band.

I’d hoped Grant might have painted Leonard Woolf. But no. So this is his ‘Self Portrait’ (1920).

— The Nelson Evening Mail, April 2 1907
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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 there is a town called Nilstrom, where Afrikaners thought that they had found the Nile.

Hitler was not indifferent to meals.

Embracing one’s girlfriend under lampposts is a bourgeois activity.

A grasshopper has been stuck in a painting by Van Gogh for 128 years.

Every minute, somewhere in the world, a man is taking his own life.

Hastings Banda was once a GP in Kilburn.

Ships of the Royal Navy carried slavery manuals until the 1970s.

For just £299 you can look 20 per cent younger.

The Pacific island of Peleliu cost the 1st Marine Division 6,500 casualties to secure in 1944. No further use was made of it in WW2.

Mediocrity is the one true demonic force.
.

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 one of the finest in our fleet. I am a lucky young divil I know. The ship, which

p2
is Commanded by a very smart man, is to fly the Flag of the Admiral Commanding the Home Division of the Home Fleet, and my headquarters will therefore revert to the Thames, where I first had the greatest of all good luck — my meeting with the wife! How are things with you all. Accept for yourself and family every sincere good wish which is not

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only called forth by this season. (That sounds minced, but I mean they do on all the time!) I meditated a descent on Dublin at Christmas, but stern duty was asleep with one eye open and has intimated that, as I have to take 16,500 tons of stuff to sea for trials on the 8th January, and as a new ship is as much under control as a young wife, that I had better postpone my visits till a more fitting season. Truth to tell the trials are a big

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responsibility & anxiety in this foggy season, and I shall heave a sigh of relief if, & when, I bring her safely back and have some knowledge and experience to go on with. Perhaps late on I may slip away and I shall look forward to another yarn with you. In the meantime every good wish to you all from

Your affec. brother,

A.H. Smyth

.

II

Confidential

Copy
Extract from Letter

×  ×  ×  ×

From  – – –  Admiralty
To      – – –  The Commander-in-chief, Grand Fleet.
No     – – –  M. 08900
Date   – – –  7. December, 1915.

×  ×  ×  ×

‘My Lords concur in your opinion that the interception of the “Kristianfjord” reflects great credit on Commander Adrian H. Smyth, and he is to be so informed.’

—

Commander A.H. Smyth, R.N.
H.M.S. “Teutonic”

For information.

(signed) D.R. De Chair
Rear-Admiral

“Alsatian”
9-12-15.

—
For The Spectator

I came.

I saw.

I concurred.