Back to Kent and Reculver, the ruined church built within the footprint of a Roman fort. It is ruined because, even though it dated from Saxon times, the parish voted in 1808 to pull it down to build a new church inland.The towers were kept up as a landmark to shipping and in this aerial photograph from 1920 they are still capped in a rather persnickety style. Those caps had gone by 1931 and you can see a photo of the towers I took in 2015 below.
I've been passing the time over the summer evenings by delving a bit more deeply into genealogy, and was delighted to discover that I am related to Amy Dillwyn, Welsh lesbian campaigner, novelist and industrialist, who was my third cousin once removed. Even though she was born in 1845 and my father in 1928, a combination of young parents on her side and older fathers on mine makes them the same generation of descendants from our common ancestors, John Whyte (1752-1814) and his wife Letitia (1755-?). To be specific: Amy Dillwyn was born in 1845 (the third child of four) ...
I started off using Anchor to host my podcast Never Mind The Bar Charts, before a year and a half in moving over to Podbean.
Second and third paragraphs of third chapter:The Kosovo myth played a significant part in the creation of the modern Serbian state in the early twentieth century. St. Vitus' Day, which had been instituted in the nineteenth century in the belief that the Battle of Kosovo had been lost precisely on that day, was first celebrated as a national religious holiday in 1913, after the Turks had been decisively beaten. The holiday was said to honor the "chivalrous contest and the conquest of evil," and to symbolize a bloody, unsparing revenge against Turks and Muslims in general. The possibility of using ...
There is nothing quite like The Night of the Hunter. As Peter Kimpton has written: At its heart, the film is a children's fairy tale - strange and idiosyncratic - but also a noir thriller, laced with the darkest elements of both genres: death, guilt, greed, poverty, cruelty, biblical references and a terrifying pursuit by the scariest of bogeymen. The tragedy is that, because of its poor critical reception, its director Charles Laughton never made another film. Here members of the cast and crew, including Lillian Gish, Shelley Winters and the peerless Robert Mitchum, remember making the film. If you ...
Fri, 12:56: The Atomic Bombings of World War II: The Views of the Radar Man https://t.co/nIsAfsHVyG Jacob Beser was the only ma... https://t.co/WHFnzo2ANS Fri, 13:06: RT @DelsolClaire: Stay in Ireland, they said. It's BEAUTIFUL, they said. Just as good as any European place. Our beaches, our mountains, ou... Fri, 18:33: George Eliot, by Tim Dolin https://t.co/XMmtwAfOWX Fri, 20:48: The Beirut Blast: An Accident in Name Only https://t.co/9JdZFYlT4a @CrisisGroup reports. Sat, 07:59: Just discovered that Amy Dillwyn was my third cousin once removed. https://t.co/ju4r26HQmg Sat, 09:30: Whoniversaries 8 August: George Cormack, John Baker, Terry Nation, Tom Georgeson, Pooja Shah https://t.co/xXwhrc8z0U Sat, ...
September will mark 10 years since I attended my first Liberal Democrat Conference, albeit this year's Conference being entirely online. Having attended most Federal Conferences over that period I have witnessed numerous debates on topics ranging from public services to constitutional reform and from scrapping Trident to building more houses. Lately, several of the motions that have come to be debated at Conference have been very uninspiring; all motherhood and apple pie, while not wanting to scare the political horses too much. Can we truly call something a debate if 99% of conference goers are already in favour of it? ...
The headline to this blog is not mine. It's a real headline from the Daily Mail. I repeat it here not to praise it but to show how grotesque the thinking is from right wing press and politicians. The back ... Continue reading →
Sat 8th
08:30
Whoniversaries 8 August: George Cormack, John Baker, Terry Nation, Tom Georgeson, Pooja Shah
i) births and deaths 8 August 1907: birth of George Cormack, who played King Dalios of Atlantis in The Time Monster (Third Doctor, 1972) and K'Anpo Rinpoche, Time Lord disguised as Buddhist abbot, in Planet of the Spiders (Third Doctor, 1974) 8 August 1917: birth of John Baker, who played a Time Lord in Colony in Space (Third Doctor, 1972) and Ralph the servant, one of several characters killed off early in the first episode of The Visitation (Fifth Doctor, 1982). 8 August 1930: birth of Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, writer of The Daleks (1963-64), The Keys of ...
Do you use the park or play area? We have managed to get a grant to do up the park/play area. A group of residents and councillors is now working on options. These will come out for consultation as soon as possible - meanwhile, we would love to hear your ideas, what would your children like? What must be kept? Or changed?Please email chriswillmore@blueyonder.co.uk
I am grateful to the residents who recently highlighted to me the fallen fence between the car park and playpark at Roseangle. I contacted both City Development at the council (responsible for the car park) and Neighbourhood Services (responsible for the playpark) and the Head of Environment responded helpfully as follows : "I can confirm that the local environment manager has picked this issue up and is arranging for an urgent repair."
Statues have been moved and removed, defaced and smashed since ancient times. As ruling dynasties are supplanted and once powerful states are vanquished their replacements were often keen to sweep away the physical memories of their predecessors. During the last two centuries archaeologists the world over have found in rubbish heaps or river beds the busts or decapitated statue heads of former kings and emperors. So, while I was initially shocked that some protestors in my home city of Bristol toppled the statue of Edward Colston and dunked it in the harbour, when I reflected on it I thought it ...
