That is All You Need to Know
 That is All You Need to Know trailerWe were in Salisbury again last week, to see That is All You Need to Know, a production by Idle Motion at Salisbury Arts Centre telling the story of the Bletchley...
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"Oxford Somerset" - a mystery Topsham author
Further to the identification of "Richard Gray" as Jasper Salwey (see Salutation Inn), a correspondent just drew my attention to another mystery author with a Topsham pub connection: the...
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Giant angry owl - "Yarp"
A couple of Sundays back we were in Wells, Somerset - England's smallest city - as Clare had been shortlisted in a writing competition. Unfortunately she wasn't placed, but it turned out to be a...
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Lowcliffe and Southlands: from cradle to grave
I've touched on this topic a couple of times before, but I just found in Isle of Wight County Press Archive an editorial that's quite enlightening about the fate of Lowcliff (aka Lowcliffe aka...
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Southlands: Puseyites and Polynesian princesses
A bit more about Southlands, the long-disappeared marine villa at Blackgang, Isle of Wight: one segment of its short history links in to the story of two notable figures in Victorian Anglo-Catholicism,...
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Shaw's Tourist's Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight
A pleasant set of images from Shaw's Tourist's Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight (pub. London, The Graphotyping Company, Limited, 7, Garrick Street, W.C. Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., Stationers'...
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The lucky escape of Kerenhappuch Newnham
Parachute Petticoat tropeA steep flight of steps scales the cliffs, along which the pedestrian may proceed, and from which he can get a very extended view; but he will have to be careful, as not long...
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1873 ads: a selection from Shaw's
A nice crop of adverts from the 1873 Shaw's Tourist's Picturesque Guide to the Isle of Wight. Unlike the locally-targeted ads in Shanklin Spa: A Guide to the Town and the Isle of Wight, these are...
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Stephen Reynolds in Sidmouth
An edited cross-post from the Devon History Society site: a forthcoming Sid Vale Association talk by Dr Nigel Hyman - The Great War: Stephen Reynolds in Sidmouth - may be of interest. Held on Wed 19...
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Annals of the Poor
I've resisted reading the Rev Legh Richmond's 1814 Annals of the Poor, as it's a compilation of classic 19th century pious literature - not my cup of tea at all. However, it's also a classic of Isle of...
View ArticleThe Imitation Game
Further to the post That is All You Need to Know, we just went to see The Imitation Game, the historical thriller based on Alan Turing's central role in the cracking of the German Enigma code in World...
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Carisbrooke Castle #1
We visited the Isle of Wight at the weekend, and despite a poor prognosis for the weather, Saturday 15th turned out to be a beautifully fresh and changeable autumn day, and we went to Carisbrooke...
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Panchatantra
I love it when memories drop into context, years later. On the bus yesterday, I was talking with Clare about school memories, and a recollection surfaced: How Supersmart ate the Elephant. This is a...
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The Kestyns of Cather Castle
Further to the brief comment in Carisbrooke Castle #1, I just checked out Robey F Eldridge's 1897 The Kestyns of Cather Castle, a novel by an Isle of Wight author, which turns out to be available as a...
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Isle of Wight photo tours - Victorian-style
With the sheer ease of photography nowadays, it's easy to forget the complications that the hobby presented in the late 1800s. I just found a nice batch of Photographic News articles in which amateur...
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Isle of Wight: Heaton Cooper / Hope Moncrieff guide
Another nice example of what's findable on the Internet: the fairly rare 1908 A&C Black guide, Isle of Wight. The text is by Ascott Robert Hope Moncrieff (1846-1927), a regular contributor to the...
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The timeline of Chad's Rock
Another post inspired by the interesting category History of Blank, Missing and Empty Things at John Ptak's blog Ptak Science Books: the fate of "Chad's Rock" (aka Chad Rock), a picturesque monolith on...
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Albert Midlane's Vecta Garland
Looking for topographical images of the Isle of Wight Undercliff (in the search, so far unsuccessful, of finding an identifiable image of Gore Cliff at the location of Chad's Rock prior to the 1853...
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The Dropping Rock
similar elsewhereAnother Blank, Missing and Empty Thing, and in fact another rock that's disappeared from history: the Dropping Rock, a spring that was formerly a fixture of St George's Down, near...
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Mount Misery
Mount Misery is another interesting topographical poem from the 1860 The Vecta Garland, and Isle of Wight souvenir. A number of locations have this name: notably the highest points of St Kitts (renamed...
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