Friday, October 30, 2015

Are you a genius?

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‘Oh! Ezra! how beautiful you are! With your pale face and fair hair! I wonder - are you a genius? or are you only an artist in Life?’ This i...

A spirit to our honour

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‘The Year 1765 has been the most remarkable Year of my Life. That enormous Engine, fabricated by the British Parliament, for battering down ...
Monday, October 12, 2015

Manliness of the soldier

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Today marks the bicentenary of the birth of William J. Hardee, one of the best of the Confederate soldiers in the American Civil War. He is ...

The brave Edith Cavell

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Edith Cavell, a British war and nursing heroine, second only perhaps to Florence Nightingale, was executed 100 years ago today. She revoluti...
Thursday, October 8, 2015

Breaking with Burr

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Harman Blennerhassett, an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who emigrated to the US and got caught up in a 19th century land-grabbing conspiracy led by...
Thursday, September 24, 2015

An old, leaky, faded umbrella!

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Yale University Press has just published an abridged version of the diaries of Ivan Maisky (Maiskii), the Soviet Union’s highly educated and...
Thursday, September 17, 2015

The nonconformist Newcome

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‘I heard today yt a new complaint was gotten to Chester agst mee, wch a freinde hath prevented.’ This is the Rev Henry Newcome, who died all...
Monday, September 14, 2015

To clarify my thoughts

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RIP Oliver Sacks, a British neurologist, whose books about patients with neurological conditions sold widely, largely because of his literar...