If anyone wonders what I looked like in 1956, they can find out from this photo. I'm the one in the glasses, the second from the left (from our viewpoint) in the second row from the back.

Last week BBC Radio 4's "Book at Bedtime" was Neil Gaiman's "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains", read by Bill Paterson and broadcast in five fifteen minute parts. As you might expect, it was excellent. It's available online - at least in the UK but possibly more widely - at this location.

Folding a sheet is rather like doing a jigsaw: it's best to start by finding the four corners.

This morning I learned that the final Terry Pratchett Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, had gone on sale today. I ordered it at around 9:30 this morning. I received the standard Amazon email acknowledging my order, including "We’ll let you know once your item(s) have dispatched", and quoting an estimated delivery date of September the 2nd to ( Read more... )

There's not usually much original drama on British TV in the summer months that is worth watching, but this year has been an exception. First there was the BBC's miniseries of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Apparently its ratings were poor, but it's hard to see why, as I thought it was excellent. Perhaps its combination of alternate history with ( Read more... )

I just entered my computer room on the first floor (the second floor if you're American), only to find next door's cat sitting on the chair! I shooed it away, and it left via the open window, the same route that it must have entered by.

All six parts of the BBC's radio dramatisation of Ursula Le Guin's first three Earthsea books are available here, though I don't know for how much longer. Hopefully access won't be restricted to those in the UK.

To mark Ursula Le Guin's 85th birthday, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an excellent half-hour programme about her today. You can find it here. In the coming weeks the BBC is also broadcasting dramatisations of both The Left Hand of Darkness (on Radio 4, starting this Sunday) and Earthsea (on Radio 4 Extra, starting on the 27th - I don't know whether this ( Read more... )

I found this in a review by Harry Mount of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown's Exotic England: the Making of a Curious Nation:

"She has unearthed a lovely nugget from Thackeray, in the first-known English ode to curry, a wonderfully terrible poem:

What next my dextrous little girl will do ( Read more... )

I've just been to see I need a Doctor: The Whosical at a local theatre. It describes itself as "the unauthorised Doctor Who musical comedy", and it's enormous fun. All done by a cast of two, plus a guy on a synthesiser providing the music. If you ever get the chance to see it, then do so.