Concerning sparrows in Ethiopia, more than one Alma in Wisconsin, and William Langley in Port Stanley. — For The Emigre
Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE
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Also tagged beards, berries, birds, Cameroon, death, dogs, Ethel Smyth, Ethiopia, facts, fleas, government, Guinness, intelligence, Moondog, music, Nelson Evening Mail, news, patriotism, publishing, rivers, Rome, Russians, satire, Shantha Bandara, singing, Sri Lanka, Stanley, TE Lawrence, The Emigre, the sea, typos, William Langley, Wisconsin, women
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Or; in the kitchen with my best mate’s mum . About mid-February last year, we were sitting around one afternoon, exchanging the usual disenchantments on the subject of St Valentine’s Day, when my best mate’s mum casually dropped into conversation the fact that in her younger days she once co-wrote a book for Mills & […]
Filed in Non-fictions
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Also tagged American, Bernado Bertolucci, books, Charlotte Rampling, Chelsea, diagrams, Dominic Hilton, education, Falkland Islands Museum and National Trust, food, girls, jizz, John Bunyan, kebabs, Manchester, Mandarin, Maryland, MILFs, Mills & Boon, mothers, North Derbyshire, nuts, Portugal, Russians, servants, stuffing, Swedes, the French, the Seventies, the UN, Valentine's Day, Vienna, Wales, Working Party of the UK Federation for Education in Home Economics, Yule log
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Saturday, December 12, 2020
i.m. John le Carré (1931-2020) . I spy You spew He/she/Pierre Spies We (Graf) Spee You Spanx® They spunk .
Inside Story: a novel / How to Write By Martin Amis Jonathan Cape £20 . It is traditionally ‘not done’ to review books in terms of what they’re not. And yet: this book is not a novel. It says it is on the front cover; but it isn’t. And Martin Amis makes it clear it’s […]
Filed in Journalism, review
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Also tagged 9/11, Amazon, autobiography, Brexit, Christopher Hitchens, Clive James, criticism, death, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Jane Howard, food, Germany, James Fenton, Jonathan Cape, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Mystic Meg, Nabokov, nonvels, Philip Larkin, pilates, publishing, Robert Conquest, rugby, Salman Rushdie, Saul Bellow, Solzhenitsyn, terrorism, the Gulag, the Holocaust, The New Yorker, The Oldie
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Sunday, September 6, 2020
The Sri Lankan street photographer talks about the greatest shot he never got… and one he did. — For the Sri Lankan Sunday Times
Filed in column, interview, Journalism
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Also tagged Anuradhapura, Castle Hotel, Colombo, drugs, food, Galle, Instagram, Jaffna, Japanese, Journalism, Malaka Pathmalal, Narahenpita, nattamis, Pettah, photography, riots, Roar Media, saints, slums, Sri Lanka, Sunday Times (SL), tailoring, teaching, violence, Wanathamulla
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. The Challenger voyage report is in 48 volumes, which weigh over 400lb. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, November 22 1906 . In the Republic of Cameroon Guinness is thought to be an aphrodisiac. A search for ‘fat naked German man chasing pig’ did not match any image results. Bernard Lout was buried in […]
Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE
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Also tagged apparel, Bernard Lout, books, bookshelves, Cameroon, Challenger, Chrysippus, death, emus, England, finance, food, France, Germans, government, Greeks, Guinness, humour, machine guns, Nelson Evening Mail, news, nudity, pigs, quizzes, satire, science, Testudines, the Falklands, the internet, vocabulary, Warren Buffett
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. The Irish language still lingers in the Bahamas among the mixed descendants of the Hibernian patriots banished by Cromwell to the West Indies. One can occasionally hear black sailors in the London docks, who cannot speak a work of English, talking Irish to the old applewomen whom they meet, and thus making themselves intelligible […]
Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE
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Also tagged anatomy, astronomy, churches, clubbing, Diderot, elephants, Facebook, fruit, Irish, ironmongery, madness, Nelson Evening Mail, news, Oliver Cromwell, Poetry, Prince Gunarasa Casinader, Russians, sailors, satire, shoes, Sri Lankans, Stephen Joyce, tea, the Bahamas, Turks, twins, urine, walls, Walter Benjamin
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. 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
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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, Royal Navy, satire, school, seafood, the British, the Irish, Unitarians, Utilitarians, Walter Rothschild, war, Wicca
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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
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Also tagged composition, Elizabeth Knepp, fire, friends, health, John Hayls, music, National Portrait Gallery, Oliver Cromwell, opera, Pelham Humfrey, portraits, Royal Navy, Samuel Pepys, singing, The Athenaeum, The Critic, the Royal Society, William Davenant, women
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Thursday, February 6, 2020
The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste Canongate, £16.99, pp. 428 . In 1935 the troops of Benito Mussolini’s sinister-clownish Roman Empire II invaded Ethiopia, in large part out of spite for Italy’s embarrassing defeat there 40 years before. Initially largely uncontested – thanks both to emperor Haile Selassie’s desperate faith in international brotherhood and to […]
Filed in Journalism, review
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Also tagged Abysinnia, Adwa, Andy McNab, Canongate, death, dragons, Ethiopia, fiction, gas, Haile Selassie, history, Homer, Italians, Maaza Mengiste, Mussolini, photography, the Bible, the Derg, The Spectator, Verdi, war, women, WW2
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