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Gremlin?
Dorset war artwork is preserved (Rod Minchin, Western Morning News, March 17, 2015) reports on the successful conservation of a characterful mural painted in 1942 by Flight Sgt Sidney Beaumont of 263...
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Ticky: fine satirical fantasy
I mentioned a while back (see Westwood) about the Vintage Classics reprints of Stella Gibbons novels, and just very much enjoyed reading the 2011 Vintage edition of her 1943 Ticky, a satirical fantasy...
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Tennyson: an educational compendium of misquotation
One of my literary pet peeves is misquotation, and particularly the misquotations that get into the educational system, often via its urge to reduce complex commentary to short easy-read soundbites...
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It ain't that kind: two-and-a-half years on
A progress report: as regular readers will be aware, two-and-a-half years ago I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer of unknown primary (CUP), which is not curable, and generally very bad news....
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Rocked in the cradle of the deep
"He had, besides, many plans of the utmost importance to occupy his mind. There was his long-pondered invention to be perfected, the oscillating berth that was going to do away with seasickness". -...
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Princess Elizabeth at Newport Minster
Coincidental to the recent celebrations of the discovery and reburial of Richard III, a few days ago we visited the site of an earlier royal reburial: Sts Thomas Minster, Newport, Isle of Wight, which...
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Alum Bay
On 31st March - a gusty and cold, but bright, day - we took the bus from Newport to Alum Bay, whose beach I haven't visited since around 1970. Out of season, the chairlift doesn't operate, and I was...
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Blackgang Chine, March 2015
Finally, after years of visiting the Isle of Wight, and many walks starting or finishing at the Blackgang Chine bus stop by the giant smuggler, we visited the Blackgang Chine theme park itself. And an...
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Blackgang: a whale of a chine
There aren't many roles for whale skeletons in literature, but one appears in Maxwell Gray's 1913 novel Something Afar (published in the USA as The Desire of the Moth), where the author gets in a...
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Wilhelmina Stitch on Blackgang
Reading Geoffrey Grigson's 1945 description of Blackgang Chine bazaar (see Blackgang: a whale of a chine), I assumed that his reference to "Fragrant Minutes of verse by Wilhemina Stitch" was just a...
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Memorials of Exmouth
Memorials of Exmouth by the Rev. William John Wesley Webb (aka the Rev. William Everitt) is a pleasant and eclectic late 19th century compendium of Exmouth history and trivia - as the author describes...
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The Temple and Tower at Exmouth
If you're in the area of the Imperial Hotel at Exmouth, Devon - on Alexandra Terrace, or its junction with Morton Road and the Esplanade, or the Clock Tower on the Esplanade - you can see an unusual...
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Damnation trolley
A spot of technical geekiness for a change: something struck me as very familiar about the "stair-climbing shopping trolley" on the cover of the Late Spring 2015 catalogue for Solutions World, a...
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The Beauties of the Shore and bogus quotations
I have a regular peeve about misquotations, but I suppose it was more forgiveable a couple of centuries ago when you couldn’t Google sources. Nevertheless, you occasionally run into positively wilful...
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Blackgang: Five Rocks
"Here once was a fine houseSpacious, warm and bright.Where the island’s lords and ladiesDanced all thro’ the night.But then the boggarts and the browniesAnd elves, in they came.Took over the mansionNow...
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Invictus
Some sort of prize for "most egregious appropriation of a literary source" has to go the makers of this 2015 Xbox One advert that just began airing on UK television."Be the master of your fate and...
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Agnes Ibbetson, Exmouth botanist
Another spinoff from Memorials of Exmouth: Mrs Agnes Ibbetson (née Thomson, 1757-1823) was an outstanding self-taught plant physiologist and polymath: the most prolifically-published female researcher...
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South Devon Railway: 1844 NIMBY list
A while back I found this interesting list of the petitions objecting to the South Devon Railway Act, 1844, which set up the infrastructure for the building of Brunel's railway link from Exeter to...
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Thomas Dalling Barleé in Dawlish and elsewhere
I just had a spot of déjà vu on seeing Thomas Dalling Barleé's 1837 Miscellaneous Poetry, where I found the address of Lady Watson for the previous postSouth Devon Railway: 1844 NIMBY list. The...
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Devon history: a compendium
It never quite registers with me that Clare and I have now been living in Devon for nearly twenty years. I had a reminder this week with my decision to officially retire as website maintainer for the...
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