20th Century
Return To The Jernbanemysterium
A phrase lingers in the mind. In passing, Mr. DH — my colleague, a fellow Puffin to us all, and master of that mysterious gift known as the turn of phrase — once summed up [more…]
Mystery
19th Century
Enemies Within: Mouchard!
Autumn 1899, just weeks before the turn of a new century, saw two men released from Pentonville Prison on London’s Caledonian Road. Jailed seven years previously following an anarchist plot in Walsall, some continued to [more…]
19th Century
Enemies Within: Anarchy!
Only the nieve might think the nighttime streets of 1894 Soho, a den of immigrants and nere-do-goods, were not already alive with talk of the events of the previous chilly February afternoon. Passers-by investigating an [more…]
19th Century
Enemies Within: Rendezvous on Windmill Street
Ruffians, alone or in groups of two or three, descend from different directions along gloomy London streets on a sharp winter’s weekday night in February 1894. Amongst them is a figure in a top hat [more…]
19th Century
Enemies Within: A Curious Incident at The Observatory
On a crisp February afternoon on a non-descript Thursday in 1894, tram conductor Mr William Smith issued a through ticket from Westminster Bridge to Greenwich. On entering the horse-drawn tram, the passenger concerned wore a [more…]
20th Century
A Ukrainian Enigma
I have an original photograph bought as part of a “bundle” from a militaria seller whose business model is to put together sets of documents, photographs and ephemera that appear to be vaguely related so [more…]
Arts
Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann
The ‘Flower Moon’ is the term the Osage Indians of Oklahoma use to describe that time of year with a full moon in May when the plains around them suddenly burst forth in millions of [more…]
20th Century
Desert Mysteries Redux – Part Four
In Part 3, I included a photograph of a Hawker Hart with most of its fabric covering stripped off as a potential Desert Mystery regarding its fate. Further research has revealed that K4907 apparently had [more…]
20th Century
Desert Mysteries Redux – Part One
In the original Desert Mysteries series, I wrote about a 1939 edition of Blackwood’s magazine bought at an antiques fair that led me to research the lives of the men who had read it and [more…]