So Richard Cœur-de-Lion owed his name to bravery in battle? Hmmm, because Robert Chambers‘ 1869 Book of Days, pillaging a medieval romance, tells a different tale. As we join proceedings, Richard is languishing in the nick (again! but it’s German this time) for having beaten up a pub musician, killed the son of the king…
Two points re Eunuch umpires needed (for the Madrid Masters): Being a eunuch doesn’t necessarily lessen desire or its outward manifestations. It depends when the snip occurs. Eunuchs should be playing, not umpiring. Those intended for senior office in various societies used to be done in order to remove their ability to create a dynasty…
Sad and strange: Helmut Simon, the guy who, with his wife, found Ötzi, the prehistoric iceman, has disappeared while walking at somewhere in the region of 2,400m. Rescue teams have given up hope of finding him alive, and Margaret Marks tells me visitors to Der Standard are already speculating (now I scroll down, I can…
In a riposte to a piece by Ron Gompertz about Spanish plans to sue Italy over the Roman occupation, Al Pernales suggests that a win might encourage Madrid to sue the US for collaborating with continental drift during the Triassic and thus raising to an unacceptable level the price of an afternoon’s shopping in Manhattan.…
Apparently a bunch of American academics came to Barcelona recently on their annual beano and, rumours about Baldie Tours having spread, recoiled in horror when they got into their coach on Monday morning and found a delightful young Spanish woman waiting for them. “Where’s the baldie? We want the baldie!” they cried as one. Apparently.…
Two brothers [illegible] one kingdom. One dreamed of peace for his country, the other fought valiantly for his ideals: This photo (scroll to no 25) is from the University of Hawaii’s brilliant Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands collection. Sfida al re di Castiglia (“The Tyrant of Castile”), a 1963 Hispano-Italian, helmet-clattering, bodice-busting epic featuring…
I’ll be visiting Jan van Bakel’s site again shortly to quote from his extraordinary collection of letters written by Flemish soldiers in Napoleon’s armies, but here‘s another strange thing I found, which he quotes from Rüdiger Safranski’s Martin Heidegger – Between Good and Evil (1998): Heidegger by then was a venerable old gentleman, and his…
It is held in some ovoids that the only way to understand what you wrote when drunk is to repeat the experience. Although fixed habits ill become a man without a fixed income, I have knocked back the odd glass of phylloxera blood from the Priorat and will now endeavour to explain to you, dear…
Moving house, so orders may take longer until mid-February - mail me first if in doubt. Shop deliveries free on foot in Leeds LS1-8 & LS13. Dismiss