19th Century
A Bear’s Diary – Part 6
March 2nd, 1809. We are back in Portugal at last. It has been a circuitous journey across ridges and valleys, avoiding the French troops on the lower ground, but we have managed it without any [more…]
Month: January 2019
Arts
Postcard from Lille, Part 2
First Class Previously I regularly visited the continent travelling by train, ferry and hovercraft. Subsequently I went via the channel tunnel but before the high speed rail link to St Pancras had been completed. After [more…]
20th Century
A History of Pop Music – 1969
Featured song: The Rolling Stones – Honky Tonk Women This is a series of articles looking at pop music from 1955 when in my opinion proper pop music began up to 1999 when they stopped [more…]
Arts
Going Postal with Question Time
> Graphic EJ Fiona Bruce (remainer) presents debate from Derby, with a panel of politicians and other guests facing topical questions from the audience. She is joined by minister for justice with responsibility for prisons [more…]
19th Century
Milestones in Nineteenth Century Firearms Development, Part Two
In my introductory article we saw that by the beginning of the 19th century the flintlock was firmly established as the state-of-the-art means of ignition in military and sporting firearms. In this article, we will [more…]
Hobbies
The Basel Problem
One sometimes gets very interesting results when one turns divergent sums upside down. The Basel problem was asked by Pietro Mengoli in . He asked what is the exact summation of the reciprocals of the [more…]
19th Century
A Bear’s Diary – Part 5
January 19th, 1809. Our return to Lisbon will not be like our march north. Then we were travelling with an army in good order on broad roads through a populated area near the coast. Now [more…]
Arts
Where have all the Post Offices gone?
According to Touchstone in ‘As You Like It’, the seventh form of lie is “…the lie direct” (Act V, Scene IV): our Politicians do not often use this form – for instance, the late and [more…]
Arts
Postcard from Lille, Part 1
In the prologue we recalled a fond age of travelling to the near continent via rail, ferry and hovercraft. This landscape changed with the opening of the Channel Tunnel. At the beginning of Eurotunnel operations, [more…]