Language and Gamut
I become increasingly fascinated by language. I studied English (language and literature), French and German at O Level, before focussing on maths and physics at A level, and Engineering Science at university. Only when I took a degree in Modern Language Studies...
History – The Prequel
Claire told me long ago that time immemorial, or before legal memory, is defined as before 1189 A.D., and was fixed by the Statute of Westminster in 1275. Today we visited Stonehenge, a Neolithic stone circle on Salisbury Plain, and it made me wonder what the...
Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke de Richleau
Do Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke de Richleau have anything in common? I posted recently about the Dartmouth Book Festival. One thing that I forgot to mention is that in John Suchet’s introduction he mentioned that he was a fan of historical fiction and had started...
Ethics and Moriarty
The October edition of Red Herrings has landed on the doormat. Sadly David Stuart Davies has passed away. He was editor of Red Herrings for twenty years and was an internationally known Sherlock Holmes expert. In this edition I discovered that the man labelled the...
Trust the Process
I remember reading that if you want to carve a sculpture of someone, start with a block of marble, and chip away everything that doesn’t look like the person. It might have been an elephant, I can’t remember. It seems to me about as useful as saying that if you want...
Dartmouth Book Festival
I posted recently about the Dartmouth Book Festival, sadly it has now come and gone. What a fabulous event it was. Claire and I were entertained and enlightened in equal measure. It was very professionally organised and run, which is amazing because most of the people...
Milestones
In the world of project management, and project sponsorship, where I used to spend my time, milestones are important. They mark important interim achievements on the way to an ultimate goal. So it was when walking the Camino de Santiago. Each milestone (or kilometre...
Latin – Unfinished Business
While I was in Waterstones with Claire and found the book on rituals, I actually bought Gwynne’s Latin. I have unfinished business with Latin. On my first day at grammar school I was still talking for a few seconds after Mr Wilson shut the classroom door. I was...
Writing Rituals
Yesterday Claire and I visited Waterstones to return the books I’d bought her for her birthday, and to replace them with books she didn’t already have. I came across a book on rituals, and discovered that Victor Hugo had a writing ritual which involved him stripping...
Language and Gamut
I become increasingly fascinated by language. I studied English (language and literature), French and German at O Level, before focussing on maths and physics at A level, and Engineering Science at university. Only when I took a degree in Modern Language Studies...
History – The Prequel
Claire told me long ago that time immemorial, or before legal memory, is defined as before 1189 A.D., and was fixed by the Statute of Westminster in 1275. Today we visited Stonehenge, a Neolithic stone circle on Salisbury Plain, and it made me wonder what the...
Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke de Richleau
Do Cardinal Richelieu and the Duke de Richleau have anything in common? I posted recently about the Dartmouth Book Festival. One thing that I forgot to mention is that in John Suchet’s introduction he mentioned that he was a fan of historical fiction and had started...
Ethics and Moriarty
The October edition of Red Herrings has landed on the doormat. Sadly David Stuart Davies has passed away. He was editor of Red Herrings for twenty years and was an internationally known Sherlock Holmes expert. In this edition I discovered that the man labelled the...
Trust the Process
I remember reading that if you want to carve a sculpture of someone, start with a block of marble, and chip away everything that doesn’t look like the person. It might have been an elephant, I can’t remember. It seems to me about as useful as saying that if you want...
Dartmouth Book Festival
I posted recently about the Dartmouth Book Festival, sadly it has now come and gone. What a fabulous event it was. Claire and I were entertained and enlightened in equal measure. It was very professionally organised and run, which is amazing because most of the people...
Milestones
In the world of project management, and project sponsorship, where I used to spend my time, milestones are important. They mark important interim achievements on the way to an ultimate goal. So it was when walking the Camino de Santiago. Each milestone (or kilometre...
Latin – Unfinished Business
While I was in Waterstones with Claire and found the book on rituals, I actually bought Gwynne’s Latin. I have unfinished business with Latin. On my first day at grammar school I was still talking for a few seconds after Mr Wilson shut the classroom door. I was...
Writing Rituals
Yesterday Claire and I visited Waterstones to return the books I’d bought her for her birthday, and to replace them with books she didn’t already have. I came across a book on rituals, and discovered that Victor Hugo had a writing ritual which involved him stripping...