Here’s a selection of some of the most entertaining/interesting posts on the site this year – thoroughly incomplete, as it doesn’t include much of the frothing ephemera that makes FT so good (in my partisan view). As usual when I lo[…]

there is plenty more to say about this useful particle of lollardry but to kick things off
i. sarah seemed to saying the word BUMPKIN derived from a comical mispronunciation of the word LOCAL — which is awesome ambitious as mispronunciations go[…]

For the past few months I’ve been reading The Hobbit aloud to my wife – it’s relaxing for both of us and good practise for future readings to a probably more restless audience. I think it’s the first time I’ve read the b[…]

The seeds of the detective fiction genre were planted with Poe’s 1841 publication of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, but it was The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868) that introduced many of the now classic features of the genre – viz &#82[…]

so this is about semi-unintended portals, and this is one — because at one point will and lyra run for safety to a BELVEDERE and this explodes a bunch of ideas in my head PP maybe didn’t mean bcz
i. belvedere just means a place that is go[…]

it’s a reflection of the way i read — fast skim and skip x multiple reread — that i catch onto these i think: fragments in a book which exactly transport you to another, not for reasons of “hommage” (a word i dislike: it[…]

“an inch of hair that represents infinite evil”:
vanity fair’s rich cohen attempts to reclaim the “toothbrush”[…]

Rewards and Fairies was Rudyard Kipling’s follow-up to his extremely successful Puck Of Pook’s Hill, though it’s best-known now for containing Britain’s Best-Loved Poem, aka “If-“. My last encounter with that poem […]

So farewell then Alison Lapper. Your reign on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, annoying my Dad is to end. But you have been a tremendous presence there, reminding us of the power of statuary and the indomitable spirit of motherhood. But what, w[…]

Things most people know about European languages  – One – Spanish for ‘beer’ is ‘cerveza’. Two – English is not in the same language family as French and Spanish. When looking at other European words for beer it is appa[…]