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Author Archives: A S H Smyth

Monty’s trouble

Monday, May 28, 2018

A footsoldier’s review of Antony Beevor’s Arnhem: the Battle for the Bridges, 1944. — For The Oldie

Filed in Journalism, review | Tagged 1st Airborne Division, Allied Expeditionary Force, Antony Beevor, army, Arnhem, books, Britishness, engineering, Field Marshal Montgomery, Flanders, General Bradley, General Eisenhower, General Patton, Germans, history, Holland, Nijmegen, non-fiction, Operation Market Garden, paratroopers, Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, the Dutch, The Oldie, the Schutzstaffel, the Wehrmacht, WW2 | Comments (0)

Monday, 28th May

Monday, May 28, 2018

Bank holiday sun. The home-improvers chatter in their hammered morse.

Filed in Poetry | Tagged bank holidays, DIY, The Pikey Laureate | Comments (0)

Sehr Gutenberg

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

On movable type, the Internet, and almost every damn thing in between. — For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Tagged blogging, books, Germany, Gutenberg, information, Latin, Mainz, marginalia, monks, movable type, printing, Project Gutenberg, publishing, religion, scriptoria, Sellar and Yeatman, Stephan Füssel, TASCHEN, technology, the Bible, the Göttingen Library, the internet, The Oldie, Umberto Eco, UNESCO, vellum | Comments (0)

Spies like us?

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

A less-than-Smiley response to John le Carré. — For The Oldie

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Tagged books, George Smiley, John le Carré, lexicons, London, maps, memoir, MI5, MI6, Penguin, spies, The Oldie, walking | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 30, 2018

. Norway has five leper hospitals, with about 600 patients. — The Nelson Evening Mail, January 24 1907 . There is an injury called ‘tennis elbow of the heel’. The rocks in the Sultanate of Oman are special. Hitler only started all the Nazi bollocks because he was such a godawful painter. There is no necessary connection between […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged Adolf Hitler, America, birds, boxing, codicology, crime, death, dogs, Edwin RIst, finance, Francis Urquhart, geology, health, history, leprosy, London International Palaeography Summer School, manuscripts, mountaineering, Natural History Museum, Nazism, Nelson Evening Mail, Norway, Oman, painting, palaeography, phones, Poetry, poets, policing, pudding, Samaritans, Stephen Merchant, tennis, the Bible, the Scots Guards, Tibetan, Tring | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 23, 2018

. We call our day 24 hours, but it is really 23 hours 56 minutes 5 seconds. — The Nelson Evening Mail, September 28 1906 . ‘Facetious’ is the shortest word in the English language including all the vowels in alphabetical order. The English theatre loves the joker. Samuel Beckett notched up 35 runs in first-class cricket. UK funeral directors are […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged America, anatomy, baking, californium, comedy, cricket, death, education, English, fishing, funeral directors, gun violence, JR Ewing, mackerel, men, money, murder, music, Nelson Evening Mail, republicanism, Ross Brown, Samuel Beckett, singing, the pentatonic scale, the UK, theatre, time, torture, Uzbekistan, vowels, weather, work | Comments (0)

Creation-ism

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

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 […]

Filed in correspondence, Journalism | Tagged A Peter Brown, Aled Jones, army, bassoons, Beethoven, Chapel Royal, choral societies, Christianity, cosmology, cricket, DECCA, German, Germans, Hampton Court, Handel, Haydn, Italians, Kent, King James, Maidstone, Milton, music, Napoleon, oratorio, Oxford University, Poetry, religion, school, sheep, singing, Spring, the Bible, the Church of England, the French, The Oldie, the Oxford Spezzati, tigers, Vienna, war, West Kensington, whales, worms | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 16, 2018

. Electricity is now used to improve the complexion. — The Nelson Evening Mail, July 4 1908 . The Chinese Christian warlord Feng Yu-xiang (1882–1948) baptised his troops en masse, using a firehose. Vincent Kompany has suffered more than 40 injuries. Time passes very slowly when you’re in a hippo’s mouth. Poetry must be entered into by a personal encounter, or […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged Baby Bunting, Cadbury, children, China, chocolate, electricity, Feng Yu-xiang, football, German, hair, health, hippopotami, insults, Japan, Johnny Cash, men, Milan, Nelson Evening Mail, onions, Poetry, Queen Victoria, religion, song, sport, Sri Lanka, suicide, tennis, the Irish, time, Vincent Kompany, water, writers | Comments (0)

‘amusingly’

Sunday, April 15, 2018

I a ….s ….w ….z am ….an ….11am ….a.m. amu ….any ….anu ….aim amus ….anus ….Maus ….amid amusi ….amusingly ….amusing ….amuse amusin ….amusingly ….amusing ….maudlin amusing ….amusingly ….abusing ….causing amusingl ….amusingly ….amusing ….ganising amusingly ….amusing ….agonisingly ….vanishingly . II a ….s ….w ….z am ….an ….11am ….and amu ….any ….anu ….Amy amus ….anus ….amid ….Maus […]

Filed in Poetry | Tagged Found poetry, Samsung Galaxy S7, The Pikey Laureate | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, April 9, 2018

. Last year 15,391 persons kept bees in this colony. The number of hives was 74,341. — The Nelson Evening Mail, April 10 1907 . It’s not every day a virgin conceives and bears a son. Indifference to facts is not confined to the alt-right and the hyper-liberal Left. The word ‘minge’ is of Romany extraction. […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Tagged Alcoholics Anonymous, alt-Right, anatomy, apiarists, bees, Bill Wilson, Bloomfield Cricket and Athletic Club, British Empire, chronology, computers, cricket, Dr Bob Smith, drink, elk, empathy, England, Erith, Europe, Gamini Jayantha Molligoda, hashtags, health, India, intelligence, Nelson Evening Mail, New Zealand, offspring, politics, Queen Victoria, religion, Romany, science, sex, Sri Lanka, Truth, weather, women | Comments (0)