Team Of The Week

Grass roots football is poles apart from the pampered world of the elite game. The almost endless rain that we have endured over the last couple of months has meant that many non league teams are faced with a backlog of fixtures, a situation exacerbated by the refusal of the FA and their associated league committees to extend the season. So much for a duty of care to players. The situation…

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The Dreadful Hollow

My thoughts on The Dreadful Hollow by #NicholasBlake #CrimeFiction #BookReview

A review of The Dreadful Hollow by Nicholas Blake – 240311 Drawing its title from the opening line of Tennyson’s Maud: A Monodrama, the tenth book in Nicholas Blake’s Nigel Strangeways series, originally published in 1953, starts off as a relatively simple case of poison-pen letters, but takes a grimmer and more disturbing turn midway through the book. One of the characters, Stanford Blick,…

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A Special Kind Of Mirage

The truth behind the Flying Dutchman and its link with Arthurian legend #mirage #science #KingArthur

Those imbued with a less romantic spirit, though, sought to provide a rational explanation of the phenomenon of The Flying Dutchman. An early attempt appeared in Frank Stockton’s Round-About Rambles (1870) in which he tells of a captain’s reaction when some of his crew reported a sighting. “This strange appearance”, he explained, “was caused by the reflection of some ship that was sailing on the…

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Power On The Scent

My thoughts on Power on the Scent by #HenriettaClandon reissued by @DeanStPress #CrimeFiction #BookReview

A review of Power on the Scent by Henrietta Clandon – 240307 I seem to be on a random sort of thematic chain at the moment. Having just finished two books that involved a poison despatched by dart I now have two books, of which this is the second, where a wasp, one actual and in this case putative, make an appearance. Originally published in 1937 Power on the Scent is another novel that John…

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Driving Tests

The first Briton to pass a driving test was not the first person to pass a British driving test. To find out more about this curiosity and to discover the history of the improvements in road safety, follow the link below. Curious Questions: Who was the first person to take a driving test?

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Book Binding Of The Week

I cannot say that I have given anthropodermic bibliopegy much thought but the practice of using human skin as a form of binding for a book has recently been in the headlines when Harvard University announced that it was removing the binding from the copy of, appropriately enough, Des Destinées de l’Ame they have held since the 1930s. The book, written by Arsène Houssaye in the 1880s, a…

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Death In The Clouds

My thoughts on Death in the Clouds by #AgathaChristie #HerculePoirot #CrimeFiction #BookReview

A review of Death in the Clouds by Agatha Christie – 240305 The twelfth novel in Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot series, originally published in 1935 and going under the title of Death in the Air in America, is a variation of a murder in a railway carriage with an impossible and closed crime thrown in for good measure. Her eccentric and megalomanic sleuth is on board a flight from Paris to…

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Hardwick’s Great Hall

The splendour that was the Great Hall of #EustonStation #railwayana

The success of the London and Birmingham line prompted other lines from the Midlands and the North East to use the Euston terminus as their gateway to London, putting pressure on the already rudimentary facilities of the station. It might have had an impressive but purely decorative propylaeum but the directors of the newly formed London and North Western Railway Company (L&NWR) wanted to build…

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The Sharp Quillet

My thoughts on The Sharp Quillet by #BrianFlynn reissued by @DeanStPress #CrimeFiction #BookReview

A review of The Sharp Quillet by Brian Flynn – 240303 After Conspiracy at Angel had been almost universally panned by critics Brian Flynn went back to basics and starts The Sharp Quillet, the thirty-third in his Anthony Bathurst series, originally published in 1947 and reissued by Dean Street Press, with quite a bang. In the prologue there are no less than fifteen bodies, the sex worker who was…

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The Flying Dutchman

The #myth of The Flying Dutchman #history #mystery

The fate of a merchant ship owned by the Dutch East India Company, which went missing off the Cape of Good Hope in 1641, was the source of increasingly more lurid tales. By May 1821, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was telling how its captain, Van der Decken, after searching vainly for the Cape and caught in a storm, swore that he would round it, even if it took until doomsday. The ship was…

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Impact Of Evidence

My thoughts on Impact of Evidence by #CarolCarnac reissued by @BL_Publishing #CrimeFiction #BookReview

A review of Impact of Evidence by Carol Carnac – 240301 For its February 2024 reissue the excellent British Library Crime Classics series has chosen Impact of Evidence, originally published in 1954, a welcome addition to the canon of Edith Caroline Rivett’s work that is available once more to those without the patience or deep pockets to seek out the originals. Rivett wrote under a number of…

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Waiters Of The Week

If you are in Paris and are looking for fast café service in Paris, perhaps you should seek out Pauline van Wymeersch at the Le Petit Pont café facing the Notre Dame cathedral or Samy Lamrous who plies his trade at La Centrescarpe in Paris’ 5th arrondissement. They were the winners of the women’s and men’s sections of the revived Course des Cafes, a two kilometre race through the streets of the…

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Vanishing Point

My thoughts on Vanishing Point by #PatriciaWentworth #CrimeFiction #BookReview

A review of Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth – 240228 In the twenty-fifth book in her Miss Silver series, originally published in 1953, Patricia Wentworth blends two familiar topics, an incipient romance between an impoverished relative used as a skivvy by her mean-spirited benefactress, Rosamond Maxwell, and a dashing all-action hero, Craig Lester, with a murder mystery, although the…

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Hardwick’s Euston Arch

The story of the #arch at #Euston station #PhilipHardwick

The circularity of history. When George and Robert Stephenson conceived their plan for what was to be the world’s first long distance passenger railway, they planned to run the line from Euston Square to Birmingham, which did not gain city status until 1889. However, in order to get their bill through Parliament, which they did in May 1833, they had to bow to objections from local land owners and…

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Spotted Hemlock

My thoughts on Spotted Hemlock by #GladysMitchell #CrimeFiction #BookReview

A review of Spotted hemlock by Gladys Mitchell – 240225 The first thing to say about Spotted Hemlock, the thirty-first in the Mrs Bradley series and originally published in 1958, is that by Gladys Mitchell’s standards it is a pretty accessible and entertaining read. The plot is predictably bonkers, a melange of rats, more rats, cellars, hemlock, rhubarb, ghostly horsemen and mistaken identities.…

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The Lieutenant Conundrum

How is lieutenant pronounced and has the British aversion to loo anything to do with toilets? #linguistics #pronunciation

Noah Webster might have radicalised the way that words were spelt in America, but some of his suggestions fell on stoney ground, such as tung for tongue, wimmen for women, and iland for island. He also waded into the debate around which letters should be included in the alphabet. Benjamin Franklin had argued that c, j, q, w, x, and y were unnecessary and that they should be replaced by symbols to…

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The Mirror Crack’d From Side To Side

My thoughts on The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side by #AgathaChristie #MissMarple #CrimeFiction #BookReview

A review of The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side by Agatha Christie – 240223 The ninth book in Christie’s Miss Marple series, originally published in 1962, is distinctly average, overlong and one where you could almost just read the final chapter and get the gist of the mystery and how it is solved. True to form, we are treated to three murders, although the second and third are merely…

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