Long before COVID-19, pandemics of a far more virulent nature stalked the imaginations of novelists and screenwriters, from 'The Andromeda Strain' to Hollywood's more recent fascination with zombie hordes. In Wiltshire, with the help of Russian assassins and the Novichuk nerve agent, those fancies took flesh

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Uncouth Bacilli as George Bernard Shaw called them. Arguing for redundancy, he spelled cant and hes. Flicks, forming noun plurals, earned nicknames: rogue apostrophes, greengrocer’s apostrophes. The English Journal declared them unnecessary stating context resolved ambiguity. Deppenapostroph (Idiot’s Apostrophe) is the use of correct English apostrophes, incorrectly, in written German, to aid pronunciation, eg. banana’s […]

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Unlike carpets, madam, children are not improved by beating.                                                                                                  —Oscar Friedmann The Montefiore Home in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda is a Jewish residential aged-care facility that opened in 1897, and was named after Sir Moses Montefiore, 1st Baronet (1784–1885), a philanthropist, British banker and Sheriff of London. Montefiore was from an Italian-Jewish […]

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The critics didn't fancy 1980's 'Somewhere in Time', but audiences did. Where the solons of the stalls lost their way was in failing to understand the movie's effect on ordinary people. Working in the rarefied world of 'serious' film and theatre criticism, they couldn't quite grasp why it would become a popular cinematic phenomenon

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Booval Tea Ladies During World War I, 35,000 returned soldiers, many wounded and ill, passed through Ipswich. The Booval Comfort Club provided aid to Australian fighting men— motto: Keep the fit man fit. Rationing restricted women’s clothing. Flour bags, old sheets, saved towels, made dresses, under-garments, crocheted with butcher’s twine. At Swanbank Rail Station, with […]

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St Corona Latin for Crown. Patron saint of plagues. Testified for a Roman soldier, named Victor, a Christian, whipped by the Christian-hating judge, Sebastian, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, eyes gouged out, yet refused to deny Christ. Corona, sixteen, wife of a soldier, knelt and prayed for Victor. Imprisoned, tortured, drawn and quartered, in […]

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I saw my self this morning a little way from the ship one of the Animals before spoke off, it was of a light Mouse colour … with a long tail which it carried like a grey hound, in short I should have taken it for a wild dog, but for its walking or runing […]

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The Netflix series is only four episodes, but that's enough for a revealing peek at New York's insular, secretive and ultra-ultra-orthodox Satmar sect, which opposes the very existence of Israel. 'The only real Jews are Hasids,' they preach, 'even a drop of assimilation instantly disqualifies them from being a real Jew'

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My first thought was that the queen of crime could not have ended her novel as the BBC has its adaption -- 'adaption' in this instance being very broadly defined indeed. Yet the mini-series still makes for rewarding viewing right up until the re-written final chapter. That's when the wheels fall off with a thud

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Michael Portillo's 'Great Australian Railway Journeys', which sees him retrace George Bradshaw’s nineteenth-century journey through an emerging nation, is a delight, even for those who don't share the peculiar passion in this age of jetliners for getting there by train

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