by David West | Aug 26, 2025 | News
On the 26th of August, 1791, John Fitch was granted a US patent for a steamboat. So often it is warfare that drives technical innovation, take the jet engine and rockets as just two examples. Yet fourteen years after the patent the Battle of Trafalgar was fought...
by David West | Aug 25, 2025 | News
Wikipedia tells me that on the 25th of August, 1609, Galileo demonstrated his telescope to Venetian lawmakers. Galileo is a key character in Fire and Earth, the second book in the Sir Anthony Standen Adventures. But let’s take a look at the development of the...
by David West | Aug 24, 2025 | News
I recently posted about overcoming the monster as the most basic plot for story telling. I had just read John Le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, in which the book’s hero was also the monster. I have now finished reading the next book in the George Smiley...
by David West | Aug 24, 2025 | News
I have recently given a friend of mine some investment advice. He has had a very poor record of investment in the past, so much so that he thought his investment had, in some mysterious way, brought about the collapse of the companies he had invested in. Of course...
by David West | Aug 23, 2025 | News
Being British I am perhaps drawn to historical events in which we take pride, Waterloo, Trafalgar, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, etc. So for a change here’s one we can be thoroughly ashamed of. Wikipedia tells me that on the 23rd of August, 1839, Britain seized...
