A S H Smyth

Author Archives: A S H Smyth

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, May 27, 2019

. The maximum suicide age is between 65 and 75. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, August 9 1906 . Forest Green Cricket Club accepts no liability for damage to vehicles parked on the green whilst a game is in progress. There are pros and cons to time-travelling while black. Pope Gregory declared the rooster the most suitable […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged anatomy, aristocracy, art, Ashmolean Museum, baking, Christianity, cocks, cricket, crime, education, employment, farming, Forest Green, Fox News, frogs, Fukushima, Latin, music, Nelson Evening Mail, news, North Korea, nuclear power, Partick, race, Raymond Joseph Teller, time-travel, toilets | Comments (0)

Black samurai

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Yasuke: The True Story of an African Samurai by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard Sphere £20 (hardback) . In late July 1579, an enormous, well-dressed and well-armed African bodyguard stepped off a boat into the southern Japanese port of Kochinotsu. Yasuke – perhaps from ‘Isaac’ in Amharic – had (probably) been abducted as a child […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged Alessandro Valignano, Amharic, China, Christianity, Ethiopia, Geoffrey Girard, Geographical, Japan, Japanese, Jesuits, religion, samurai, the East Indies, Thomas Lockley, war | Comments (0)

Out and aboutpost

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Outpost: a journey to the wild ends of the earth by Dan Richards Canongate £16.99 (hardback) . Imagination fired by a picture of his father outside an Arctic shed, artist and writer Dan Richards sets off in search of places that ‘allow mankind a foothold in otherwise inhospitable terrain’. Icelandic ‘houses of joy’ (not what […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged architecture, art, Björk, boats, Canongate, Dan Richards, fire-fighting, Geoff Dyer, Geographical, humour, Iceland, Jack Kerouac, lighthouses, Mars, non-fiction, Norway, Ranulph Fiennes, Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin, science, Svalbard, Switzerland, the Arctic, travel, Turner Prize, walking, Wendell Berry, Werner Herzog | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, May 13, 2019

. Thomas King was fined 12s, or eight days’ hard labour, at the Thames Police Court for intoxication. While in this state he asked a pawnbroker to advance 2s on a baby. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Wednesday, April 10 1907 . There are 2000 non-functioning satellites in space. Lord Reith did not want people to enjoy […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged Aethelred the Unready, America, anatomy, babies, Ceylon, crime, drink, education, Indians, James Joyce, jungles, Lord Reith, money, Nelson Evening Mail, Panama, radio, religion, seafood, shipping, space, tea, the Japanese, war | Comments (0)

My father helps correct a Work In Progress

Saturday, May 4, 2019

p6 aufroofs p15 febrew- wery p20 rub– brickredd p34a as a pious p34b ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest, a partial ex- ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison p37 ildiot repeated p45 ………..[Balbaccio, […]

Filed in Non-fictions | Tagged corrigenda, Faber, fathers, Found poetry, handwriting, James Joyce, manuscripts, typos, work in progress | Comments (0)

Ivory-tower thinking

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Review of Future Cities: Architecture and the Imagination, by Paul Dobraszczyk. — For Geographical

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged architecture, art, books, film, Geographical, non-fiction, Paul Dobraszczyk, Reaktion Books, Royal Geographical Society, slums, the future | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 8, 2019

. On an average there is only one sudden death among women to eight among men. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Tuesday, September 25 1906 . The Earl of Oxford did not write Fleabag. Hull is other people. Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci chose to stick the with most ridiculous crap name that they could think of. Failure to […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged army, borscht, cars, Cúchulainn, Da Vinci, death, Facebook, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, horses, Hull, Justin Trudeau, men, Nelson Evening Mail, nomenclature, Ohio, Oxford, Russia, seafood, sex, space, The Incredible Hulk, TV, violin, women, yoga | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 1, 2019

. There are now about 54,000 Chinese coolies in the Transvaal gold mines. — The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, March 14 1907 . Los Angeles is a lousy, boring little town. A European could die there from boredom. January ain’t about the blues. Piers Morgan is sick. The veins of Englishmen flow with rainwater. In a land […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged Andy Murray, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brexit, Cana, Chernobyl, crime, death, deer, Dominic Hilton, drink, Englishmen, Europeans, fathers, gold, health, hobbies, homosexuality, January, Los Angeles, marriage, men, money, Nelson Evening Mail, philosophy, Piers Morgan, rain, Sellafield, sex, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the Chinese, the West, 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 | Tagged Abyssinia, art, Bengal, Bloomsbury, Clive Bell, David Garnett, Duncan Grant, fancy dress, France, Horace de Vere Cole, India, Italy, Leonard Woolf, painting, portraits, Royal Navy, St Paul's Cathedral, St Paul's School, The Slade School, Vanessa Bell, Virginia Woolf, Westminster School of Art, WWI, WWII | Comments (0)

Extracts from the letters of Gerald Spence Smyth, Capt., 1st South African Irish Regt., Abyssinian campaign, 1941

Monday, February 25, 2019

6.2.41 I am given to understand that this is the 6th day of Feb. but for the life of me I don’t know what day of the week it is. Anyhow it doesn’t make any difference here. Excuse the dirt. A.A.¹ has just spilt some tea on my pad. The journey from the forest² to these […]

Filed in Non-fictions | Tagged Abyssinia, Allan Arnott, biltong, Cape Point, censorship, Cyril Cochran, death, East Africa, Ethiopia, food, Gerald Fayle, Gerald Fayle Preston Smyth, Gerald Spence Smyth, infantry, Italians, letters, Mega, Micky Williamson, Muslims, Somalis, South Africa, South Africans, the Irish, war, WWII | Comments (0)

Author Archives: A S H Smyth

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Black samurai

Out and aboutpost

NEWS AT A GLANCE

My father helps correct a Work In Progress

Ivory-tower thinking

NEWS AT A GLANCE

NEWS AT A GLANCE

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

Extracts from the letters of Gerald Spence Smyth, Capt., 1st South African Irish Regt., Abyssinian campaign, 1941

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Author Archives: A S H Smyth

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