Tuesday, July 19, 2022

McGovern’s landing skills

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‘On our takeoff today we had a tire blow out - the right main gear tire, but it went out after we cleared the field or rather just as we lef...
Friday, July 15, 2022

Comparing church services

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James Robert Hope-Scott, an English lawyer and member of the Oxford movement, was born 200 years ago today. While still in his 20s, he trave...
Sunday, July 10, 2022

First Lady of Texas

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‘Decided to get off in Matlock, 6:40 P.M. A mountainous and beautiful place - and a nice hotel - “New Bath” - with a pleasant garden. So man...
Monday, June 27, 2022

Ardent love of liberty

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Sir Roger Twysden died all of 350 years ago today. Having inherited his father’s baronetcy and estate, he became something of a rebel agains...

Banning foreign buttons

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Narcissus Luttrell - a serial chronicler, keeping diaries and journals through much of his life - died 290 years ago today. Most of the reco...

So much inner power

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‘This military education is a darned good thing for me. But I suspect life has a good many blows in store for me yet, else Nature would not ...
Wednesday, June 15, 2022

Mrs Grundy’s Easter hat

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The diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay, sometimes called the ‘bad girl of American letters’, have been published some 70 years after her dea...
Thursday, June 9, 2022

Marches without water

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Poor William Grant Stairs. Aged but 28 he died of malaria 130 years ago today. Having been caught up in the feverish ‘Scramble for Africa’ a...
Tuesday, May 31, 2022

A kindly and witty diarist

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‘Introduced bill to curb gambling on the stock market and it is about as popular as an alarm clock in a boys’ dormitory.’ This is from the v...
Thursday, May 26, 2022

Journal des Goncourt

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Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edmond de Goncourt, a major French literary figure of the 19th century, and the founder of Ac...