• Tue, 12:56: Coronavirus exposes flaws with EU’s infectious disease agency https://t.co/wGm2tSGvUH I’ve certainly heard mutterings about the ECDC this year; here’s the case for the prosecution.
• Tue, 14:02: Some tough choices here. https://t.co/dxF0rmv7Q9
• Tue, 18:31: February 2010 books https://t.co/jQpE0RfZp4
• Tue, 19:49: RT @alexstubb: Thread: Following the debate surrounding @JosepBorrellF visit to Moscow: a few observations having met Lavrov dozens of tim…
• Tue, 20:48: The price of the protocol https://t.co/ohrak18l1d Euractiv: “By triggering Article 16, the Commission effectively abandoned its position that the Protocol was needed to safeguard peace.”
• Tue, 22:05: A sad day for Polish history. I’ve known @jgrabows since we shared an apartment together in Germany in the summer of 1986; wishing him all strength and the best of luck with his appeal. https://t.co/2N2fD04NQl
• Wed, 09:30: Whoniversaries 10 February https://t.co/wkjI7PD2Av
• Wed, 09:30: Whoniversaries 10 February https://t.co/0ciUbUvJrs
• Wed, 10:45: RT @AsheLaura: Manchester Guardian 20 June 1899: a letter signed by 94 Oxford dons who wished to object to Cecil Rhodes’ being given an hon…

i) births and deaths

10 February 1928: birth of John Ringham, who played Tlotoxl in The Aztecs (1964), Josiah Blake in The Smugglers (1966), and Robert Ashe in Colony in Space (1971)

10 February 1932: birth of Barrie Ingham, who played Alydon in the Cushing!Doctor film Dr Who and the Daleks and Paris in the story we now call The Myth Makers (First Doctor, 1965).

10 February 1939: birth of Peter Purves, who played the First Doctor's companion Steven Taylor in 1965-66 and in many Big Finish plays. I had the pleasure of meeting him at Gallifrey One in 2013.

10 January 1970: birth of Robert Shearman, author of Dalek (Ninth Doctor, 2005).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

10 February 1968: broadcast of second episode of The Web of Fear. Jamie and Victoria meet up with Travers, after many decades, and his daughter Anne; the Yeti close in on the soldiers; the Doctor is still missing.

10 February 1973: broadcast of third episode of Carnival of Monsters. The Drashigs have escaped and are wreaking havoc inside the Miniscope; Kalik and Orum hatch a plan to use them to overthrow their own government.

10 February 1979: broadcast of fourth episode of The Armageddon Factor. The Doctor and Romana create a temporary sixth segment and trap the Marshal in a time loop; Princess Astra is oddly fascinated by the Key to Time.

10 February 1996: broadcast of fourth episode of The Ghosts of N-Space on BBC Radio. In the 16th century, the Doctor and Sarah uncover Vilmio's plan to take over the world using N-Space; in the 20th century, the Brigadier and Jeremy defend the castle.

This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

After the previous month’s exciting travels, I went nowhere more exotic than Geneva, where the most exciting thing that happened was that I left a valuable item on the train fomr the airport and had to chase it all the way to Berne. My trip to Geneva was the same day as the Halle train crash in which 19 people died; I was already in mid-air when it happened, and am not usually on that side of Brussels anyway, but a surprising number of people pinged me to see if I was OK (and of course I did not see any messages until I landed, which did not help). Edited to add: checking my records, I find that I was in Portugal the first weekend of the month as well.

More cheerfully, here is F helping U to dress up. (Somewhat overcorrected for red-eye in the original shot.)

I read 18 books in February 2010, exactly 11 years ago.

Non-fiction 4 (YTD 12)
War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan, by Francis M. Deng
Da Nije Bilo Oluje / Who Saved Bosnia, by Vitomir Miles Raguž
The Nature of the Universe / De Natura Rerum, by Titus Lucretius Carus
A Short History of Fantasy, by Farah Mendlesohn and Edward James

Non-genre 2 (YTD 9)
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey

SF 8 (YTD 18)
Kushiel's Scion, by Jacqueline Carey
Yellow Blue Tibia, by Adam Roberts
Ark, by Stephen Baxter
The City & The City, by China Miéville
The Push, by Dave Hutchinson
Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones
The Magicians of Caprona, by Diana Wynne Jones
Lavinia, by Ursula Le Guin

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 9, 10 including comics)
Prisoner of the Daleks, by Trevor Baxendale
Cat's Cradle: Warhead, by Andrew Cartmel
The Bodysnatchers, by Mark Morris
The Pirate Loop, by Simon Guerrier

Page count ~6,000 (YTD ~14,400)
6/18 (YTD 11/48) by women (Carey, Austen, DWJ x 2, Le Guin, Mendlesohn)
1/18 (YTD 5/49) by PoC (Deng)

Best of the month were the two that got my vote in the BSFA Awards for Best Novel – Lavinia, which you can get here – and Best Short Fiction – The Push, which you can get here. Neither won. None of the others was awful, but Baxter’s Ark maybe was the least overwhelming, especially since I hadn’t (and still haven’t) read the first in the series. You can get it here.

• Mon, 17:08: Really interesting (and mercifully brief) paper. https://t.co/d6Bf8wSnZb
• Mon, 18:24: Kaamelott: Het Raadsel Van de Kluis, by Alexandre Astier and Steven Dupre https://t.co/TVxZ3D7BgK
• Mon, 18:44: RT @davidallengreen: One highlight of this unintentionally telling letter from @michaelgove to EU is his complaint that UK was not formally…
• Mon, 18:48: RT @davidallengreen: Another letter from a UK minister complaining about being left out of EU law and policy making And again: the very po…
• Tue, 09:30: Whoniversaries 9 February https://t.co/Bq3z229Zvh
• Tue, 10:45: RT @Mij_Europe: Find it desperately sad that UK & EU are defaulting into a horribly predictable, acrimonious dynamic, characterised by mutu…

i) births and deaths

9 February 1918: birth of Morris Barry, who directed The Moonbase (Second Doctor, 1966), Tomb of the Cybermen (also Second Doctor, 1966) and The Dominators (Second Doctor, 1967), and then appeared as Tollund in The Creature from the Pit (Fourth Doctor, 1980).

9 February 1935: birth of Michael Imison, director of the story we now call The Ark (First Doctor, 1966).

9 February 1936: birth of Clive Swift, who played Mr Jobel in Revelation of the Daleks (Sixth Doctor, 1985) and Mr Copper in Voyage of the Damned (Tenth Doctor, 2007).

9 February 1969: birth of Neil Cross, who wrote The Rings of Akhaten (Eleventh Doctor, 2013) and Hide (also Eleventh Doctor, 2013).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

9 February 1974: broadcast of fifth episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Sarah escapes from the mock spaceship but is recaptured by Finch. The Doctor is menaced by a tyrannosaurus (I've been counting and that's three cliff-hangers out of five in this story in which the Doctor is menaced by a tyrannosaurus).

9 February 1982: broadcast of fourth episode of Kinda. Aris is trapped in a circle of reflective panels; the Mara cannot bear its own reflection, and is expelled and defeated, everyone else returning to normal.

9 February 1983: broadcast of fourth episode of Mawdryn Undead. Just as the Doctor is about to sacrifice himself, the two Brigadiers meet, discharging enough energy to deal with Mawdryn and his friends. Turlough leaves with the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan.

9 February 1985: broadcast of second episode of Mark of the Rani. The Doctor and Peri defeat the Rani and the Master and trap them in her Tardis with a growing Tyrannosaurus. (Yes, another one.)

9 February 2020: broadcast of Can You Hear Me? What connects the nightmares of a young girl from 1380 Aleppo to strange happenings in the present day? Who is the shadowy figure who appears in the night? And what have they got to do with a young woman in the far future, trapped in an impossible prison?

Second frame of third page:

Lancelot: Get back, I'm going to break the door down!

I got this because it won the Prix Saint-Michel in 2009 for best comic by a Dutch-speaking author. Linguistically I feel a bit cheated; the book was originally published in French as Kaamelott, tome 3: L'Énigme du Coffre, and won the prize because Dupré's native language is Dutch. That seems to me a bit of a stretch. I note that this category has been dropped for the most recent years of the Prix Saint-Michel.

Alexandre Astier created the TV series Kaamelott and starred in it as King Arthur. It's a humorous take on the Arthurian mythos with the Knights of the Round table turning out to be stupid, lazy, cowardly, and ineffective. This award-winning comic is a story of buried treasure and taxation. All of the reviews that I have found online say that if you liked the series, you'll love the comic. I haven't seen the series and it left me rather unimpressed. But you can get it here in Dutch, as I did, and here in the original French.

This was my top unread comic in a language other than English. Next up is Le Dernier Atlas, written by Fabien Vehlmann and Gwen de Bonneval, art by Hervé Tanquerelle and Frédéric Blanchard.

• Sun, 13:12: RT @ianjamesparsley: The DUP is literally entirely at fault for the Irish Sea Border. Its MPs held the balance of power when the crucial d…
• Sun, 13:14: RT @Simon4NDorset: I’m afraid the learned Prof’s conclusion is based on academic theorising rather than real life and political imperatives…
• Sun, 14:48: RT @acatherwoodnews: Gove: ‘I think the people of this country have had enough of exports’ https://t.co/mNhNA79J9I
• Sun, 16:04: RT @BrigidLaffan: Not often I read something @Telegraph that I feel has to be taken on but Vernon Bogdanor’s opinion today is one such piec…
• Sun, 18:59: Who votes in referendums in Northern Ireland, but not in elections? https://t.co/ArjPlaADDF
• Sun, 19:30: George Shultz, American statesman, dies at 100 https://t.co/zIpUdarHnm via @politico
• Sun, 20:48: RT @damonwake: #belgiansolutions https://t.co/4ed5czhrVn
• Mon, 09:30: Whoniversaries 8 February https://t.co/vgqpiG03Mr

i) births and deaths

8 February 1962: birth of Malorie Blackman, co-writer of Rosa (Thirteenth Doctor, 2018). It is sometimes claimed that she was the first non-white writer of a TV Doctor Who story; however, I have checked directly with Glen McCoy, who wrote Timelash (Sixth Doctor, 1985), and he tells me that he is Anglo-Indian.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

8 February 1964: broadcast of "The Edge of Destruction", first episode of the story we now also call The Edge of Destruction. The Tardis behaves strangely after an explosion; so does Susan who attacks Ian with scissors.

8 February 1969: broadcast of third episode of The Seeds of Death. The Doctor is captured by the Ice Warriors; Jamie and Zoe turn up the heating in the Moonbase.

8 February 1973: broadcast of third episode of The Ark in Space. The Doctor helps the humans to fight back against the Wirrn, but is confronted by the completely transformed Noah.

8 February 1982: broadcast of third episode of Kinda. Todd and the Doctor escape the deluded Hindle and Sanders, and join forces with Panna to try and hold back the Mara.

8 February 1983: broadcast of third episode of Mawdryn Undead. Mawdryn begs the Doctor to give him and his colleagues his remaining regenerations.

8 February 1984: broadcast of first part of Resurrection of the Daleks. The Daleks are attempting to rescue Davros, in a plan involving a time tunnel and the London Docklands.

8 February 2010: broadcast of Sirens of Ceres, the fifth episode of the Australian K9 series. Drake uses a strange alien substance on a group of school children in an experiment to get control of the population. Jorjie stumbles across the plan, and K9 and Starkey have to find and destroy the control devices.

This is the third of seven dates of the year on which six episodes of Old Who were broadcast (the previous two, which I forgot to note last month, were 5 January and 12 January). Today week, 15 February, is the fourth such date.

I have been mulling the question of who votes in referendums in Northern Ireland, but not in elections. There isn't a lot of historical evidence out there, but there is some. Here it is

First, and more briefly, let's look at the 8 March 1973 referendum generally referred to as the Border Poll. Voters were given a choice between two questions:

In terms of the ratio of votes in favour of the Union to votes for a United Ireland, it's about the same as the margin for independence in the South Sudan referendum of 2011. (See recent analysis here.)

More people voted in the two more consequential elections held in the first half of 1973. The local council elections on 30 May saw 681,628 votes for the various parties, with 17,492 invalid for a total of 699,120. The Assembly election on 28 June saw the parties attract a total of 722,151 votes, with 16,592 invalid votes, a total of 739,003.

The numbers don't tell the full story, of course. The SDLP, the old Nationalist Party and Republican Labour all called on their supporters to boycott the Border Poll. The Alliance Party and Northern Ireland Labour Party campaigned for their supporters to vote for Union. Even so, the total poll of 604,256 is significantly more than the numbers who voted in both later elections for parties who supported the Union in the Border Poll.

(NB that I have not broken out 48,497 votes cast for independent candidates in the local elections in the third and fourth columns, so allowing for the fact that some of them would have been pro-boycott, probably the two deficits end up much closer to each other.)

So, it seems fairly clear that 50-60,000 votes were cast in the Border Poll by people who either 1) did not vote at all in the May and June elections and 2) people who voted for the pro-boycott, pro-United Ireland parties in the May and June elections but voted in the Border Poll despite their favoured parties' instructions. Both interpretations were offered at the time, with Nationalist-leaning media suggesting that only 1% of Catholic voters had voted in towns in the West of Northern Ireland, and Unionist leader Brian Faulkner claiming that a quarter of Catholic voters had come out to vote for the Union. 12,396 votes in the Border Poll were either cast for a United Ireland or ruled invalid, so at least 75%-80% of the extra 50-60,000 voters voted in favour of the Union in March and then either voted for Nationalists or did not vote at all in May and June.

I think we can reject the possibility that electoral fraud or intimidation made a strong contribution to the difference. It seems unlikely that any organiser of electoral fraud would bother to put 50-60,000 votes' worth of extra effort into a referendum with a foregone conclusion, compared to the subsequent elections whose outcomes were much less certain. There was certainly intimidation in general, with bombs on the day in Nationalist areas, a British soldier shot dead while guarding a polling station on the Lower Falls, and the Old Bailey bomb in London which also caused one death. These events however would surely have depressed rather than boosted turnout on polling day, making the difference even more striking.

There is no other official evidence, as votes were counted at a single central centre and we therefore have no geographical breakdown of the vote. There is however one interesting set of data from Fortnight magazine, which published an opinion poll on May 21st, a week before the local elections and ten weeks after the Border Poll. 66% of Fortnight's respondents claimed to have voted in the Border Poll, compared to 58.7% of the electorate in real life; it's likely that Fortnight's respondents were unrepresentative of the politically apathetic.

The Fortnight poll also asked about voting intentions for the Assembly elecion, which is another useful indicator of its accuracy:

Compared to the actual June 1973 results, it's clear that Alliance Party support was over-represented in Fortnight's sample by around 10% across the board (except in North Down), and the NILP were also over-represented if not by as much; SDLP voters seem to have been to find. The percentage of Catholics who told Fortnight that they would vote Alliance is exactly the same as the percentage who said they had voted in the Border Poll (27%).

Anyway, the conclusion is that in a low-stakes vote whose result was a foregone conclusion, around 40-50,000 voters (and possibly a lot more) voted for the Union and then three months later did not vote for pro-Union parties (very broadly defined) in the Assembly election. Some of them will have been SDLP and other Nationalist voters, who supported their communal representatives but also approved of the status quo sufficiently to vote for it.

My gut suspicion is that the largest factor would have been voters who were pro-Union but not pro-Unionist, including many Catholics; they were possibly inclined more towards Alliance than any of the other parties, but not inclined enough to actually vote for them. It's a bit less than the difference between the 19% support for Alliance in the Fortnight poll and 9.2% in the actual election (Alliance got 66,541 in June, but 19% would have been an extra 70,000).

Second, let's look at the 22 May 1998 referendum on the Good Friday Agreement, especially in comparison with the Assembly election a month later.

The turnout, at over 83%, was massive, the highest for any Northern Ireland vote since 1921.  (The number of invalid votes, by the way, is exceptionally low for any election anywhere. I think the only Northern Ireland election with a similar number invalid votes was the 1998 Forum election, where there were slightly more, 1908, on a lower overall turnout of 754,296.)

We do in fact have the turnout by constituency for the 1998 referendum, and it is instructive to compare the result with the 1996 Forum, 1997 Westminster and 1998 Assembly elections. I'm ranking the seats by the absolute difference between Referendum and Assembly turnouts.

It's pretty striking. Never mind the 50-60,000 missing voters of 1973; here are almost 130,000 who came out to vote on the Good Friday Agreement and then stayed at home a month later; and the consistency between the Assembly turnout with the 1996 and 1997 figures suggests that these were people who did not vote in those earlier years either.

One can slice and dice these figures in a lot of ways to try and get a sense of who the missing 130,000 are. Running statistical correlations with the results for political parties, and combinations of political parties, in the Assembly election gives some pointers.

First of all, there is a very strong negative correlation, -0.89, with the Sinn Fein vote in each constituency; in other words, the less the local support for Sinn Fein, the more the number of voters who turned out for the referendum but not the election. There's a slightly weaker correlation, -0.86, with the Nationalist vote as a whole (including the SDLP and with or without a few anti-Agreement independents). It suggests that Nationalists in general and SF in particular turned their supporters out equally well for both referendum and election, possibly even a little better for the election.

The correlation with the votes of the other main parties is -0.60 for the SDLP, 0.15 for the DUP, 0.61 for the UUP and a whopping 0.82 for Alliance. Indeed, a casual glance at the table reveals that the top six constituencies for missing voters are also those where Alliance won a seat. The correlation with the total Unionist vote is 0.75; with the anti-GFA Unionist vote 0.57; with the pro-GFA Unionist vote 0.77; and with the combined total of pro-GFA Unionists and non-aligned parties including Alliance, the Women's Coalition, etc, it's 0.81.

So this suggests that the missing 130,000 voters were people who were not from a Nationalist background, some more Unionist and some very much less so, who mostly supported the Good Friday Agreement in general but no party in particular, though if they leant in any direction it would be more Alliance than anything else.

In both the 1973 and 1998 cases, a large number of voters participated in the referendum – mostly voting for the Union in 1973 and largely voting for the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 – but not in the immediately subsequent elections; and in both cases, as far as we can tell (which admittedly is not very far), they are voters who definitely do not culturally or politically identify as Nationalists, though they may be from a Catholic background, and to a lesser extent do not identify with Unionism either. But they will turn out to vote for a constitutional option that offers stability; in 1973, people were voting not for Stormont but for a continued link with the UK; in 1998 they were voting for peace, if at a price, rather than conflict.

Those two referenda were held 25 years apart, and it is now 23 years since the more recent one. The voters who turned out for the referendum but missed the elections were not decisive to the referendum result in either case – the margin in 1973 was a lot more than the 50-60,000 we are talking about here, the 1998 margin also rather bigger than 130,000. But things have changed, and we are now looking at a situation where the result of a future Border Poll looks a lot closer. Turnout in recent elections has hovered in the low 60's rather than the 70%-ish of fifty years ago, or even the high 60's of the 1990s. This suggests to me that the hidden voters who will participate in a new Border Poll but not in an election are more numerous and more important.

As to what motivates them? Philip Smith has done some initial research that chimes with my own instincts. But there's a lot more to do.

• Sat, 12:56: RT @pmdfoster: NEW: post #brexit immigration rules are shaping up to kill the au pair industry – on which 45,000 working famil…
• Sat, 14:48: Good thread on EU and Russia, though this non-Russia tweet provides a pithy pull-quote. https://t.co/KjP7gyHk9o
• Sat, 16:20: A game for the times: Pandemic Legacy Season 1 (in Dutch). https://t.co/flwuOcyJP9
• Sat, 20:53: The Last Emperor, and Puyi’s autobiography https://t.co/T0SICKSk7y
• Sat, 22:19: RT @veitdengler: Nein. https://t.co/CCzxrXWFeq
• Sun, 09:30: Whoniversaries 7 February https://t.co/GMekyv76ts
• Sun, 10:45: Key point of a good thread. https://t.co/v2F8axvNYW
• Sun, 11:45: RT @AndrewPRLevi: @nwbrux Thank you! Coming from someone of your knowledge & experience I know to appreciate the compliment. Hoping all’s a…

i) births and deaths

7 February 2014: death of Christopher Barry, who directed nine and a half stories from the first four Doctors between 1963 and 1980.

i) broadcast anniversaries

7 February 1970: broadcast of second episode of Doctor Who and the Silurians. A mysterious creature escapes the caves, kills a local farmer and terrorizes Liz.

7 February 1976: broadcast of second episode of The Seeds of Doom. Chase's men attack the base, but the Doctor manages to destroy the Krynoid by exploding the generator hut.

7 February 1981: broadcast of second episode of The Keeper of Traken. Kassia is under the influence of the Melkur; she orders the arrest of the Doctor, Adric and Tremas.

ii) dates specified in canon

7 February 1894: birth of Tommy Brockless, Toshiko's annually defrosted boyfriend, as seen in To The Last Man (Torchwood, 2008).

7 February 1987: Kathy Costello Wainright (née Nightingale) writes a letter to her friend Sally Sparrow, requesting her grandson to deliver it (along with a package of photographs) in 2007, as seen in Blink (2007).

A year since the last time I was on an aeroplane, coming back from Gallifrey One in Los Angeles. I really miss travel, and I really miss getting together physically with friends and not-yet-friends who love the same things that I do.

See you soon, I hope.

• Fri, 12:56: RT @apcoworldwide: We are proud to support @museumofpr’s sixth annual Celebrating Black PR History: Ushering in a New Era of History-Makers…
• Fri, 13:57: RT @jolwalton: Last day day voting for the @BSFA Awards shortlist round. Be the haphazard algorithm surfacing and submerging literary value…
• Fri, 15:00: Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell I really enjoyed the ride, especially the Belgian and ?Korean bits. #nwbooks https://t.co/Ws5BgDuJ1z https://t.co/pDlHvMH9qy https://t.co/TBugudcenq
• Fri, 15:30: First Man: The Life of Neil Armstrong, by James R. Hansen Armstrong comes across as a very reserved and self-contained person, not in fact well-prepared or well-suited for celebrity, although able to rise to the occasion. #nwbooks https://t.co/NyUrDIV3L5 https://t.co/6wjQCP2Yjp https://t.co/8oS4n8JkpN
• Fri, 16:01: About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1966-1969, by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles The chapter on every single story has a section devoted to Things That Don’t Make Sense. Sometimes these sections are long. #nwbooks https://t.co/Iuwdr6YQQy https://t.co/LF3GVRHjob https://t.co/4gk1joJGFg
• Fri, 16:05: RT @MSmithsonPB: This is what happens when the person who thought driving that driving to Barnard Castle was the best way to test his eyesi…
• Fri, 16:29: RT @gregrcox: @nwbrux @Heraldofcreatio I love those books.
• Fri, 16:30: The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross If I had to choose a single word to describe Charlie’s writing, I think that word would be “unrestrained”. #nwbooks https://t.co/wIL36EU7yv https://t.co/Kmy8m2kPX8 https://t.co/WqPza3P9Dt
• Fri, 17:30: Peeling the Onion, by G�nter Grass A hugely important contribution to understanding how Germany has become the sort of country it is now from the country it once was. #nwbooks https://t.co/3wIiIDFsfd https://t.co/zXrY7kq5F4 https://t.co/FRy70JOOps
• Fri, 17:56: Hooray! Belgian hairdressers reopen from the 13th! https://t.co/KehQNLfe6x

• Fri, 18:00: The Hare with Amber Eyes, by Edmund de Waal It’s quite a remarkable story, tracking the history of the Ephrussi family through the fate of a collection of netsuke from France to Austria and back to Japan. #nwbooks https://t.co/X4EVzYY6P4 https://t.co/teUb2ss93L https://t.co/qNmZNXyfTC
• Fri, 18:17: Friday reading https://t.co/ISyJYS1Kf9
• Fri, 20:35: Just a week ago since the Commission triggered Article 16 and then untriggered it. I’m trying to think of a worse 168 hours for the Commission President since the Santer resignation in 1999, and coming up blank.
• Fri, 20:46: RT @AndrewDuffEU: @nwbrux Ask Hallstein about 1965.
• Fri, 20:48: RT @pmdfoster: So. This week’s exam question: “Can the Northern Ireland Brexit protocol survive?” There’s an easy answer and a harder one…
• Fri, 22:48: RT @bluebox99: 5th February 1973 was the first time ‘The Wombles’ appeared on television. https://t.co/ZgxVt9T3yl
• Sat, 00:36: RT @NOIweala: Grateful for the expression of support from the US today for DG @WTO. Congratulations to Madam Yoo of Rep. Korea for a hard f…
• Sat, 09:30: Whoniversaries 6 February https://t.co/Hd8Ubkw8a9
• Sat, 09:53: RT @GrantLewis1: Getting pretty sick of people who voted for brexit complaining about the effects of brexit
• Sat, 10:45: Debarkle: Introduction @CamestrosFelapton https://t.co/dk6qlTJGXg First in a series about the links between the 2015 Hugo Awards and the 6 January 2021 insurrection.

broadcast anniversaries

6 February 1965: broadcast of "Inferno", fourth episode of the story we now call The Romans, and nothing to do with the 1970 story of the same name. The Doctor accidentally sets fire to Nero's plans for Rome, and Nero decides to burn the city down. The time travelers are reunited, the Doctor and Vicki unaware of Ian and Barbara's adventures.

6 February 1971: broadcast of second episode of The Mind of Evil. The Doctor speaks Chinese, but the Chinese assistant attacks the American delegate to the peace conference.

6 February 2008: broadcast of Meat (Torchwood), the one with the icky alien source of, well, meat.

Current
Koko Takes a Holiday, by Kieran Shea
The Kappa Child, by Hiromi Goto

Last books finished
Elatsoe, by Darcie Little Badger
Sugar and other stories, by A.S. Byatt
The Last Manchu: The Autobiography of Henry Pu Yi, Last Emperor of China

Next books
The Autumn Land, by Clifford D. Simak
A Buzz in the Meadow, by Dave Goulson

• Thu, 12:35: Hooray! Congratulations @KClausing! https://t.co/NU5oJQflCv
• Thu, 15:30: Accursed, by Christopher Golden and Amber Benson Readers of a revolutionary cast of mind may ask why raising a supernatural army to destroy the British royal family and end colonial rule is necessarily such a Bad Thing. #nwbooks https://t.co/vwMSkLmXzk https://t.co/0GsXaWjU4j https://t.co/jYr2gaapIC
• Thu, 15:56: RT @pmdfoster: Good recap of why Article 16 isn’t shorthand for ‘junk the Irish Protocol’ – for which, btw, there isn’t an alternative. It…
• Thu, 16:30: Da Nije Bilo Oluje / Who Saved Bosnia, by Vitomir Miles Raguž I got to know the author while he was Bosnian ambassador to the EU and NATO. He did one thing for which I forever remain grateful: he introduced me to sushi. #nwbooks https://t.co/R0MYZkbQry https://t.co/3kps8S1GzM https://t.co/2jMegYMM2d
• Thu, 17:30: The Other Islam: Sufism and the Road to Global Harmony, by Stephen Schwartz A work of apologetics written by a true believer, viewing events and people jumbled together through a partisan lens. #nwbooks https://t.co/3W8bQuDTDU https://t.co/inLSnwN6lK https://t.co/mCdkc2EYFy
• Thu, 19:01: Gallimaufry, by Colin Baker https://t.co/MxtKqZc9Qd
• Thu, 19:32: RT @AlexTaylorNews: YOU CANNOT COME OUT OF A CUSTOMS UNION, AND THEN BLAME EVERYONE ELSE IF THAT CREATES A BORDER – ESPECIALLY, ESPECIALLY…
• Fri, 09:30: Whoniversaries 5 February https://t.co/CpQp54WRzE
• Fri, 10:16: Just had my second meeting this week in French. Actually my second meeting in French this year. Come to think of it, my second meeting in French this decade…
• Fri, 10:45: RT @SuzyJourno: It’s gone unnoticed but SoS Brandon Lewis suffered a far worse fate than any local politician in @LucidTalk poll for @BelTe…

broadcast anniversaries

5 February 1966: broadcast of "War of God", first episode of the story we now call The Massacre. The Doctor and Steven land in France; the Doctor wanders off looking for an apothecary, and Steven falls in with Huguenots.

5 February 1972: broadcast of second episode of The Curse of Peladon. Jo and the Doctor suspect the Ice Warriors, but they in turn suspect Arcturus; and the Doctor is condemned to death.

5 February 1977: broadcast of second episode of The Robots of Death. Poul suspects Uvanov and relieves him of command; the sandminer's engines are stopped and it starts to sink…

Second paragraph of third story ("Poison Pen"):

The net result was that Jim Barksfield was doing what he had always vowed he would never do. He was now a pen-pusher, a form filler and successor to the man who had so regularly irritated him over the previous years with his seemingly dogged obsession with procedure, PR. and budgets. Now, and for the foreseeable future, he was himself to be that same irritant to others and he found the role uncomfortable.

A collection of stories by Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor. Most of them are non-sfnal stories about crime and the law, though the very first one has a strong horror element and the last three are short Doctor Who vignettes. Quite good at the punchline, not always as good at the set-up. You can get it here (I got my own copy autographed).

This was the non-genre fiction book (with exceptions noted above) that had been languishing unread on my shelves for longest. Next on that pile is Three Daves, by Nicki Elson.

• Wed, 12:56: RT @davidallengreen: How Theresa May casually decided that Brexit meant the United Kingdom would leave the single market and customs union…
• Wed, 14:48: RT @confusion2021: Hello All! We bring you news! After many committee discussions and conversations with the hotel we are now committed to…
• Wed, 15:30: All’s Well That Ends Well, by William Shakespeare The modestly born but intelligent Helena fulfills her reluctant husband’s conditions, by tricking him into having sex with her while thinking that she is someone else. #nwbooks https://t.co/wKCyJnavN4 https://t.co/jB9X9m9C5x https://t.co/fC2537B2Uf
• Wed, 16:05: RT @acommonlawyer: My favourite French story of this week, French foreign intelligence agents running a private assassination service out o…
• Wed, 16:30: V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore Gosh, the Eighties were different, weren’t they? Classic graphic story of a man bringing down the autocratic society that Moore envisaged taking over Britain by 1998, after global war. #nwbooks https://t.co/BUY9jQZcYd https://t.co/I6vFDKKyNe https://t.co/aCizjaNvqC
• Wed, 17:11: RT @AlexRPigman: Thanks to Borgen, I understand Ursula von der Leyen. 1/
• Wed, 17:30: Roots and Wings, by Margery Kraus An interesting snapshot of the life (or lives) of a woman who has been successful in business while also managing her family. #nwbooks https://t.co/zNemfRHNC5 https://t.co/ORHWkhvG3t https://t.co/HEnPUSw2H3
• Wed, 18:01: RT @ivanobp: @whitenothe @nwbrux @oceanclub The EU ruled three years ago that eBooks could have reduced VAT. Ireland reduced to 9% almost i…
• Wed, 18:28: January 2010 books https://t.co/sisngvm3Ox
• Thu, 09:30: Whoniversaries 4 February https://t.co/tzRKQKuKjF

• Thu, 10:45: RT @consol8ion: “Hello, is that Metaphors “R” Us? It’s about the metaphor you sent me. No, it’s great, honestly. It’s just, well… I was h…

i) births and deaths

4 February 1919: birth of Peter Butterworth, who played the Meddling Monk in The Time Meddler (First Doctor, 1965) and The Daleks' Master Plan (First Doctor, 1966).

4 January 1933: birth of James Mellor, who played Sean Flannigan in The Wheel in Space (Second Doctor, 1968) and Varan the Bad Native in The Mutants (Third Doctor, 1972).

4 February 1948: birth of Stephen Wyatt, as far as I know the only alumnus of Clare College, Cambridge, to have written for Who (Dan Zeff, a contemporary of mine, has directed); he wrote Paradise Towers (Seventh Doctor, 1987) and The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (Seventh Doctor, 1988).

4 February 1951: birth of Dez Skinn, founding editor of Doctor Who Magazine.

4 February 1980: death of David Whitaker, the first script editor of Doctor Who (from An Unearthly Child to The Dalek Invasion of Earth) and writer of The Rescue (1964), The Crusade (1965), The Power of the Daleks (1966), The Evil of the Daleks (1966-67), The Enemy of the World (1967-68), The Wheel in Space (1968) and The Ambassadors of Death (1970); also of the 1965 stage play, The Curse of the Daleks, and of two of the first three novelisations, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (1964) and Doctor Who and the Crusaders (1965).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

4 February 1967: broadcast of fourth episode of The Underwater Menace. The Doctor and friends prevent Zaroff's plan but Atlantis is flooded and destroyed.

4 February 1978: broadcast of first episode of The Invasion of Time. The Doctor returns to Gallifrey and has himself inaugurated as President, but collapses on contact with the Matrix.

iii) date specified in-universe

4 February 1814: the Twelfth Doctor and Bill Potts arrive in Regency era England and discover that a creature under the Thames is eating people (Thin Ice, 2017).

This is the latest post in a series I started in late 2019, anticipating the twentieth anniversary of my bookblogging which will fall in 2023. Every six-ish days I've been revisiting a month from my recent past, noting work and family developments as well as the books I read in that month. I've found it a pleasantly cathartic process, especially in recent circumstances. If you want to look back at previous entries, they are all tagged under bookblog nostalgia.

The biggest world event of the month was the earthquake in Haiti, in which two people who I vaguely knew died: Hédi Annabi, the head of the UN mission, who had once hosted me at a brown bag lunch with his team in New York when he was at DPKO, and elections expert Gerard Le Chevallier, a colleague from NDI days, were both among the 22 UN employees killed when their headquarters collapsed (they had been meeting a Chinese delegation in Annabi's office when the quake struck).

I had another of my marathon trips in the middle of the month, visiting Cyprus for what I think was the last time before that work ended, and going straight on from there to Juba via Istanbul and Nairobi. Here I am with Gérard Prunier and the famous Riek Machar (the husband of Emma of Emma's War). It's fair to say that he's had his ups and downs over the years since.

Later Gérard and I sampled injera and wat. I think we were watching the Egypt-Cameroon match. (Egypt won 3-1.)

In Belgium the weather was different.

With many long plane flights (including a two hour delay in Istanbul due to snow there, which must be unusual), I read 30 books in January 2010.

Non-fiction 8
The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
The Panda's Thumb, by Steven Jay Gould
The Wheel of Engaged Buddhism, by Kenneth Kraft
The Two Faces of Islam, by Stephen Schwarz
The Language of the Night, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Ta Hsüeh and Chung Yung
Juba Arabic – English Dictionary, by Ian Smith and Morris T. Ama
Southern Sudan: Too Many Agreements Dishonoured, by Abel Alier

Non-genre 7
Framley Parsonage, by Anthony Trollope
Mortal Causes, by Ian Rankin
Thirteen Steps Down, by Ruth Rendell
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
Let It Bleed, by Ian Rankin
Holy Disorders, by Edmund Crispin

SF 10
Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett
Year's Best SF 8, edited by David G. Hartwell
The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett
The Wandering Fire, by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Darkest Road, by Guy Gavriel Kay
The Uplift War, by David Brin
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Irish Tales of Terror, edited by Jim McGarry
Noughts and Crosses, by Malorie Blackman
The Turing Test, by Chris Beckett

Doctor Who 5
Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, by Marc Platt
Vampire Science, by Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum
Doctor Who Annual 1968
Wooden Heart, by Martin Day
Short Trips: Dalek Empire, edited by Nicholas Briggs with Simon Guerrier

~8400 pages (allowing for the fact that I didn't read all the explanatory material of Ta Hsüeh and Chung Yung, and only the front and back matter of the Juba Arabic English Dictionary)
5/30 by women (Rendell, Austen, Orman, Blackman, Le Guin)
4/30 by PoC (Blackman, anonymous Confucian sages, Ama, Alier)

Really enjoyed The Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett, which you can get hereThe Language of the Night, by Ursula K. Le Guin, which you can get hereThe Turing Test, by Chris Beckett, which you can get here. Really did not enjoy The Uplift War, by David Brin, which you can get here, or Irish Tales of Terror, ed. Jim McGarry, which you can get here.

• Tue, 12:03: RT @HarroldRoeland: @nwbrux Oh, dear 🙁 Thanks for the warning!
• Tue, 12:11: RT @blush_01: @nwbrux @oceanclub @KennysBookshop offer international shipping and they are so helpful.
• Tue, 12:50: RT @jodireads: @nwbrux And for me buying any physical media music or merchandise from the EU.
• Tue, 12:56: RT @davegkelly: Spectacular lenticular cloud over Mount Errigal, Co Donegal. https://t.co/rKQ4RHCVrN
• Tue, 12:59: RT @ghosthermione: @nwbrux @dduane yes I used to buy books from (indie) bookstores in UK for things the irish local ones don’t have, and th…
• Tue, 13:56: A good question. I am sceptical that it’s Whovian – the wings look a bit too stubby and the whole thing dangerously flexible. Supposed date in 1980 but a quick scan of stories from around then didn’t solve the mystery. https://t.co/dEmOWtTVw0
• Tue, 13:56: RT @sarahbevan11: @nwbrux @Stephen_C_Ward Yeah got hit by 12.99 on an order that was only 30 before shipping. So I basically paid practical…
• Tue, 13:56: RT @sarahbevan11: @nwbrux @Stephen_C_Ward Worse still site was .ie and I only found out as it was being delivered.
• Tue, 13:56: RT @ronaldscherpen1: @nwbrux Taking back control comes at a hefty price…
• Tue, 13:56: RT @ivanobp: @whitenothe @nwbrux @oceanclub That’s not true. Every EU country has its own VAT regime, and sets their own rates: Ireland and…

• Tue, 14:17: RT @sarahbevan11: @nwbrux @Stephen_C_Ward It was 10 euro shipping and 13 customs tax on a 30 euro bill. =/
• Tue, 14:17: RT @CherylMorgan: @nwbrux As I understand it, our printers have a plant in Europe, so you should be able to order and @WTPress book from a…
• Tue, 14:17: RT @Feorag: @nwbrux I advised a Danish friend last night to seek out an Irish supplier for his English-language books after he had a simila…
• Tue, 14:45: RT @alexstubb: Thread: The @EU_Commission might have screwed up the communication of the #vaccine roll-out in the past week, but important…
• Tue, 14:59: Azem Berisha’s One and Only Flight to the Castle, by Veton Surroi Explores the coming Kosovo status negotiations through the eyes of ordinary people affected by the war, and the (imagined) thoughts of the leaders. #nwbooks https://t.co/F97XFbRNPs https://t.co/CsuflDeW12 https://t.co/m3mBTALZQe
• Tue, 15:25: The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger It is mercifully short, which is the best thing I can say about it. Holden Caulfield is an unattractive character; he learns nothing in the course of the book. #nwbooks https://t.co/fT2MWBgQiE https://t.co/hzZbGNk0CI https://t.co/WpqhQX4PeZ
• Tue, 15:31: RT @WritersFrock: @nwbrux Thank god, someone else. I always thought it was just me.
• Tue, 15:31: RT @greensideknits: @nwbrux Never understood the appeal.
• Tue, 15:51: No Great Mischief, by Alistair MacLeod A rather beautiful novel about the experiences of generations of a Highland family settled in Nova Scotia; interlocking tales of tragedy and loyalty. #nwbooks https://t.co/vcIhDC6I7z https://t.co/O9X4Zu1JGb https://t.co/tipZkW1Gty
• Tue, 15:51: RT @StevenSavile: @nwbrux Bought a secondhand paperback last month today got a bill for 60p vat plus eight quid handling fee. Sigh.

• Tue, 16:05: RT @EmmaKennedy: As commentators are starting to gaslight the nation about how *brilliantly* Boris Johnson has done, let’s remember that Ta…
• Tue, 16:17: Conrad’s Fate, by Diana Wynne Jones Set in the Chrestomanci nested worlds (a wrinkle: the English Channel never happened) with family secrets etc. Not as subversive or heartfelt as some of her work. Still very good. #nwbooks https://t.co/r166u8R77e https://t.co/VcXUgHfcAD https://t.co/1bfTqCNXEH
• Tue, 16:43: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bront� I do not find the Bront� sisters’ works all that compelling in general, but I really liked this; Helen is an early feminist heroine. I was captivated by it. #nwbooks https://t.co/CGa29KEyb6 https://t.co/OgJgrKRIU8 https://t.co/4l2qjptAP6
• Tue, 16:44: RT @HortonRich: @nwbrux This is a book I’ve been meaning to read. This and VILLETTE. I disliked WUTHERING HEIGHT, liked JANE EYRE, haven’t…
• Tue, 16:50: RT @bellinghman: @nwbrux This was my ex-wife’s favourite book. I should have been warned by that
• Tue, 17:02: RT @michjnich: @StevenSavile @nwbrux Yep. No more Goldsboro or anything from the UK really. It sounded like Blackwells was considering a sh…
• Tue, 17:02: RT @Oxenstierna_IRL: @nwbrux very beautiful, I would even say
• Tue, 17:09: Double Down, by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann Covering the 2012 election isn’t quite as thrilling as 2008 – because it isn’t as exciting a story – but still a jolly good insider account of what went on. #nwbooks https://t.co/4QAwWhVPjj https://t.co/ymEi4OBnKR https://t.co/gynIcDw5Js
• Tue, 17:10: RT @worldcon2021: As of this morning, 229 people have nominated for the 2021 #HugoAwards … are you one of them? Hugo nominations are open…
• Tue, 17:11: What future for an international peace process for Karabakh? asks @Tom_deWaal. He even has a couple of tentative answers. https://t.co/IfPrZaVMdp

• Tue, 17:11: RT @StevenSavile: @michjnich @nwbrux I’m curious to see if the new https://t.co/TryS2FwHPB will circumvent the charges, but seeing as it sh…
• Tue, 17:24: RT @JamesKerLindsay: @mruddy1965 @nwbrux FFS!? Seriously!? You decided to throw all the benefits away that millions of people enjoyed becau…
• Tue, 17:35: Crowe’s Requiem, by Mike McCormack Crowe goes through sinister medical experiences and emotional trauma with his lover, and does not get a happy ending; and we wonder a little how reliable a narrator he has been. #nwbooks https://t.co/egtM8hyuS4 https://t.co/rsqouS3Dib https://t.co/dQvMlnpR1b
• Tue, 17:35: RT @StevenSavile: @michjnich @nwbrux Well they are totally arbitrary from book to book as far as I can see. But if Brexit Tax gets slapped…
• Tue, 17:35: RT @martinmcgrath: @nwbrux I assume most of that was the processing fee by the delivery company (with potentially some VAT at your end)? Th…
• Tue, 18:01: Five Escape Brexit Island, by Bruno Vincent Not so much a one-joke book as a no-joke book. #nwbooks https://t.co/9W1nAckALD https://t.co/AQlWyFMy6z https://t.co/b2mawKs07C
• Tue, 18:33: Midnight Blue-Light Special, by Seanan McGuire https://t.co/VKY67W5BSH
• Tue, 18:42: RT @michjnich: @StevenSavile @nwbrux The sad thing about it all is that none of it is the least bit surprising. It’s just everything that s…
• Tue, 18:42: RT @eveleen_mc: @nwbrux I like the view of Hark a vagrant! comic on this https://t.co/CuedDrCdMr
• Tue, 20:41: RT @ivanobp: @whitenothe @nwbrux @oceanclub Why do some people seem obsessed with finding ways to blame the EU for every single thing they…

• Wed, 09:12: Ok, I’m on for this. https://t.co/HA2aKXULuq
• Wed, 09:30: Whoniversaries 3 February https://t.co/8VdcuKEe2t
• Wed, 10:45: RT @spignal: One of the main reasons vaccination rates are so low in Europe is down to supply. And one of the reasons supply is low is beca…

i) births and deaths

3 February 1959: birth of Jimmy Vee, who has played various short creatures in New Who: most frequently the Graske, also the Moxx of Balhoon, the Space Pig, Bannakaffalatta, Skovox Blitzer, and several short Slitheen.

3 February 1975: birth of Mat King, who directed Journey to the Centre of the Tardis (Twelfth Doctor, 2013).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

3 February 1968: broadcast of first episode of The Web of Fear. The Tardis lands in a deserted London Underground; Jamie and Zoe are captured by the soldiers of an outpost and the Doctor encounters the Yeti.

3 February 1973: broadcast of second episode of Carnival of Monsters. The Doctor and Jo explore further inside the Miniscope, and encounter the Drashigs.

3 February 1978: broadcast of third episode of The Armageddon Factor. The Shadow tries to get the first five segments from the Doctor, who escapes; the Marshal launches his "final attack".

3 February 1984: broadcast of fourth epsiode of Frontios. The Doctor gets the Gravis to reassemble the Tardis and removes him from Frontios, neutralising the other Tractators.

3 February 1996: broadcast of third episode of The Ghosts of N-Space on BBC Radio. The Doctor discovers that Vilmio is an immortal alchemist, while the Brigadier and Jeremy attempt to retake the castle.

3 February 1872: death of Joseph Sundvik (in The Curse of Fenric, Seventh Doctor, 1989).

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I walked briskly through the empty dressing room to my locker. If I was going to have a chat with Dominic, I wanted to do it while I was wearing pants, and more heavily armed than it was possible to be in lace and petticoats. In addition to being a waitress and Ryan’s girlfriend, Istas served as Kitty’s costume designer, and she believed firmly in snaps and zippers and quick releases. Being a waheela—a type of Inuit therianthrope—meant she understood that sometimes people need to get out of their clothes in a hurry. That made them practical for work-wear, but not so much for the sort of things I was likely to get up to with Dominic De Luca.

Second volume of McGuire's popular InCryptid saga, which actually got the most votes in last year's Hugo for Best Series but lost to The Expanse on transfers. I wrote of the first volume:

I felt this was really Buffy reheated for New York, and as soon as the tall handsome antagonist hove into view I could see how it was going to end.

I felt much the same about this one; the heroine's voice is wearyingly sassy, the infodumping is incessant, we barely notice when there is a change of narrators part way through, and she manages to safely make an escape from the baddies climbing naked across New York rooftops having just been shot in the abdomen. One positive point is that although there are lots of non-human supernatural characters, the real monsters are the other humans. I won't read any more of the series, but I am sure it will keep on being nominated as long as that Hugo category lasts. You can get this one here.

This was my top unread book by a woman. Next on that list was Sugar and other stories, by A.S. Byatt.

• Mon, 13:14: RT @archer_rs: Mad woman believes complex epidemiological viral infection risks can be eliminated by complaining. https://t.co/FQibIo2W4o
• Mon, 13:14: RT @thantmyintu: The doors just opened to a very different future. I have a sinking feeling that no one will really be able to control what…
• Mon, 14:27: RT @bbcdoctorwho: Remembering the Doctor’s dear friend, Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen, on her birthday https://t.co/GlKQx9…
• Mon, 15:02: A Soldier in Time: The Nicholas Courtney Memoirs The life of an actor is sketched in sufficient detail that I would give this as a present to any young relative thinking of going on the stage. #nwbooks https://t.co/iYYtoZDP2Y https://t.co/DVpLKfeEjy https://t.co/VaHAEa1UHv
• Mon, 15:24: Oxford Take Off In Russian An unexpected pitfall in Russian is that the spelling is not always phonetic. Sure, compared to English or French it’s pretty civilised, but I can’t quite forgive the letter г for its treachery. #nwbooks https://t.co/OuA6saCO0x https://t.co/gETwnAaewD https://t.co/mSzOEOKQkK
• Mon, 15:46: The Go-Between, by L.P. Hartley Hartley has some acute observations about the way adults treat children, and each other. The coda, set two generations later, manages to be a satisfactory conclusion. #nwbooks https://t.co/fDM58mVAhn https://t.co/JHJ2ptGOM6 https://t.co/r08k7L1qlU
• Mon, 16:08: A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter M. Miller jr The rise and renewed fall of civilisation after a nuclear war. Explores faith, history, tradition, politics, science, and grace; and does it with wry, sympathetic humour. #nwbooks https://t.co/5V00A1gTH8 https://t.co/7WTQkdfVgq https://t.co/ySpsB0ZR2Y
• Mon, 16:30: The Rabbi’s Cat vol 2, by Joann Sfar Sfar says in his introduction to the second album that he was trying to write about racism. I’m not sure that he quite succeeded, but he did at least widen his canvas. #nwbooks https://t.co/yH1rEbUzbR https://t.co/xPUVwyRPFX https://t.co/C6PcO5WNaN
• Mon, 16:52: The Colour Of Magic, by Terry Pratchett There are various schools of thought about where to start reading the Discworld books. Back in the day, of course, we had no choice as this was the only one out there! #nwbooks https://t.co/tuOxT1NBCo https://t.co/8ZxAcidN36 https://t.co/Yrk0NN3D6m
• Mon, 17:11: Rather Be The Devil, by Ian Rankin It’s another good one. A dubious next generation criminal leader; a 1970s cold case; the micro-geography of Shandwick Place; tension between Rebus and his colleagues. Very satisfying. #nwbooks https://t.co/S4JeviLt2U https://t.co/jG7XHHhNHw https://t.co/9HGGmY8wpc

• Mon, 17:17: RT @KajaCiglic: @nwbrux and you should start here.
• Mon, 17:36: Berlin Calling, by Paul Hockenos Great passionate stuff. 1) the alternative music scene in West Berlin, 1970-89; 2) the links of the alternative music scene in East Berlin, with the opposition; 3) the Fall of the Wall. #nwbooks https://t.co/dDEcRHR6Ea https://t.co/B6ZkeoenHx https://t.co/WlUkE6mDVJ
• Mon, 17:58: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Lost Worlds of 2001 There are not one but two books-of-the-film. 2001: one of Clarke’s most passionate books. Lost Worlds: alternate storylines for novel and film. #nwbooks https://t.co/AyT0r20q1Y https://t.co/bKjWgIzPaQ https://t.co/yZrzU9jvU7 https://t.co/izuwiRY4qQ
• Mon, 17:58: RT @po8crg: If you read Tolkien, Pern and Lankmar and played D&D, then you know what this is parodying and you’ll likely enjoy it. If you…
• Mon, 18:47: Into the Ashes, by Lee Murray https://t.co/s2qoekRZei
• Mon, 19:24: RT @DetlefGuertler: Just a reminder. This could have been today’s president of the European Commission – but EU conservatives opted not onc…
• Mon, 19:43: RT @Mij_Europe: Alex’s tweet highlights extent to which UvdL is making v bad decisions &/or being spectacularly poorly advised Either way,…
• Mon, 20:05: RT @jrmaidment: There’s loads of fascinating stuff in Philip Hammond’s Brexit interview with @UKandEU, particularly on Theresa May. But i…
• Mon, 20:05: RT @jrmaidment: Philip Hammond’s assessment of Theresa May’s plan for Brexit when she became PM in July 2016 is particularly frank. Basic…
• Mon, 20:06: RT @jrmaidment: Philip Hammond pulls no punches on Theresa May’s early decision to set up DExEU and DIT. He describes it as ‘a ludicrous n…

• Mon, 20:06: RT @jrmaidment: Extent to which the direction on Brexit was fluid in the second half of 2016 is best illustrated by Philip Hammond’s anger…
• Mon, 20:06: RT @jrmaidment: Reading the full interview, it is quite amazing Theresa May and Philip Hammond managed to work together for 3 years. How a…
• Mon, 20:48: RT @SkyNews: ‘Everyone is just really happy to see each other and are enjoying being in the community.’ Lockdown has been lifted on the Is…
• Mon, 23:17: Look folks. Let’s really really *not* get excited by *any* news story about *anybody* getting *nominated* for the Nobel Peace Prize. It is easy to get nominated. People with the right to do so include *any* member of *any* national parliament… 1/3
• Tue, 09:30: Whoniversaries 2 February https://t.co/z6jXvdCNrJ
• Tue, 10:45: RT @BelfastAgmt: Absolutely no one from Belfast was surveyed https://t.co/1nfPZxmjUg
• Tue, 11:48: Just been charged €27 customs on a book delivery. Thank you, Brexiteers. If you voted to leave the EU, you are personally responsible for deterring me from buying books fro the UK again.
• Tue, 11:55: RT @CarolineGruyter: I live in Norway, which is also outside the customs union, and I have stopped ordering things online from abroad. Sove…

i) births and deaths

2 February 1930: birth of Don Houghton, who wrote Inferno (Third Doctor, 1970) and The Mind of Evil (Third Doctor, 1971)

2 February 2011: death of Margaret John, who played Megan Jones, the Director of Euro Sea Gas, in Fury from the Deep (Second Doctor, 1968) and The Idiot's Lantern (Tenth Doctor, 2006), a 38-year gap which is unmatched for the main TV show (spinoffs allow some flexibility)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

2 February 1974: broadcast of fourth episode of Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Sarah is indoctrinated by the People; the Doctor is framed as the man behind the appearance of the dinosaurs.

2 February 1982: broadcast of second episode of Kinda. The unhinged Hindle takes over the base; Todd returns, equally out of his mind; Tegan, possessed by the Mara, takes over Aris.

2 February 1983: broadcast of second episode of Mawdryn Undead. The Doctor meets the Brigadier and shocks him into remembering his previous incarnations; Tegan and Nyssa meet the younger Brigadier, and then a man with no top to his skull.

2 February 1984: broadcast of third episode of Frontios. Turlough remembers his own world's lore about the Tractators, who still have Tegan and the Doctor trapped in the tunnels.

2 February 1985: broadcast of first episode of Mark of the Rani, introducing Kate O'Mara as the Rani. In 1820s England, the Rani's experiments, aided by the Master, are turning locals into violent Luddites.

2 February 2020: broadcast of Praxeus. What connects strange bird behaviour in the skies above a Madagascan beach to mysterious deaths by a deadly virus that seems to be spreading? And what does a famous British astronaut have to do with all of this? Can the Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yaz solve this puzzle before it's too late?

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Major James Arnold studied the tussocked wasteland of the central plateau. Beyond the bleak rolling plains of tundra, the snow-capped peak of Mount Ruapehu dominated the skyline, magnificent despite the flurries of ash on the window pane. It wasn’t the first time Arnold had borrowed the office or stood in this spot, yet never had the situation been so grave.

This was one of the finalists for the Sir Julius Vogel Awards at CoNZealand last year. It turns out to be the third in a series where New Zealand law enforcers find themselves entangled with the ancient forces of Aotearoa, and I felt it depended a bit on having read at least one of the previous two to fully get what was going on. However, it's well written and suitably tense – in the middle of an evacuation from a volcanic eruption, a group of dangerous prisoners escape and cause even greater mayhem. Will keep an eye out for this writer. You can get this one here.

This rose to the top of my pile of unread books by non-white authors (Murray's family background is Chinese). Next on that list is another CoNZealand trophy, Pūrākau: Māori Myths Retold by Māori Writers, edited by Witi Ihimaera and Whiti Hereaka.

• Sun, 12:37: Ohdearwhatapitynevermind https://t.co/FkpoSEwG3v
• Sun, 13:31: Amazing to think that two years ago this weekend, F and I were able to fly to Zagreb and drive around Bosnia, seeing many old friends including @pedjabajovic, reliving old memories for me and creating new ones for us both. Those days will come again. https://t.co/NgmXWStTDS https://t.co/ElnMi7lLC8
• Sun, 15:00: Starter for Ten, by David Nicholls Told with such gusto, such humour, such toe-curling excruciating accuracy, that I actually forgot as I neared the end that I knew exactly what was going to happen. #nwbooks https://t.co/MtnEkEk49v https://t.co/vwbgXIXyBe https://t.co/BuNNTnSMq3
• Sun, 15:09: RT @amcunningham: @nwbrux I really enjoyed that too!
• Sun, 15:45: The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, by Samuel Johnson We are clearly meant to read the African characters as disaffected young English men and women; Johnson isn’t really trying to say anything about Africa #nwbooks https://t.co/hb9dJfIJ8F https://t.co/T73rWmxHtm https://t.co/if3mYf0R5L
• Sun, 16:00: RT @worldcon2021: We planned on releasing the survey results and telling you what kind of Worldcon we will be running this year by the end…
• Sun, 16:12: RT @conbrunstrom: @nwbrux Johnson, like other eighteenth-century writers like Montesquieu and Voltaire, was interested in non-European sett…
• Sun, 16:12: RT @conbrunstrom: @nwbrux 1/2 Not quite. As a young writer, Johnson had translated a history of Ethiopia – so he had a long standing inter…
• Sun, 16:30: Holy Disorders, by Edmund Crispin The book is not quite successful at keeping a consistency of tone (also Crispin, like his male characters, seems a bit uncertain about women), but there are some glorious set-pieces. #nwbooks https://t.co/eDWSwNgt02 https://t.co/lurnPZpWyA https://t.co/JGXn0PUA3t
• Sun, 17:15: Juba Arabic/English Dictionary, by Ian Smith & Morris T. Ama The verb azibu: Human azib-o lehaadi huwa worii le-oman sir. They tortured him until he told them the secret. Kelib de gi-azib ana. That dog is bothering me. #nwbooks https://t.co/GuRefoRygE https://t.co/uPviRJEWdb https://t.co/1dtvJsfT6T

• Sun, 18:00: Five Go On A Strategy Away Day & Five on Brexit Island, by Bruno Vincent These are two one-joke books – different jokes, thankfully. Five Go On A Strategy Away Day is actually better and funnier. #nwbooks https://t.co/SGM8H9Vl7i https://t.co/WS5EyTfUCQ https://t.co/5zvaCmgd9s https://t.co/AWxtNCvabq
• Sun, 18:59: January books https://t.co/TCHtnwtloE
• Sun, 20:11: 320 days of plague: holding on https://t.co/mGtamoJSnc
• Mon, 01:41: RT @reginagallen: Wonderful to see this again. The old folk at home always talked about her visiting at the height of her international fam…
• Mon, 09:30: Whoniversaries 1 February https://t.co/x2l0xAe4vE
• Mon, 10:45: RT @DavidHenigUK: Thinks. For all the complex analysis of why the UK has done so well on vaccinations to date, could a simpler reason be a…

i) births and deaths

1 February 1946: birth of the much missed Elisabeth Sladen, who played Sarah Jane Smith (companion to Third and Fourth Doctors, 1973-76; various appearances from then on, culminating in her own series from 2007 to 2011).

1 February 1962: birth of Lisa Bowerman, who played Karra in Survival (Seventh Doctor, 1989), the last person killed by the Master in Old Who; and has also played Bernice Summerfield in Big Finish audios since 1998, as well as taking a hand with directing and writing.

1 February 2000: death of Reginald Jessup, who played Admiral de Coligny's servant in the (lost) story we now call The Massacre (First Doctor, 1966) and Time Lord Savar in The Invasion of Time (Fourth Doctor, 1978).

1 February 2019: death of Clive Swift, who played Mr Jobel in Revelation of the Daleks (Sixth Doctor, 1985) and Mr Copper in Voyage of the Damned (Tenth Doctor, 2007).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

1 February 1964: broadcast of "The Rescue", seventh episode of the story we now call The Daleks (and nothing to do with the story we now call The Rescue). Ian, Barbara and the Thals destroy the Daleks' power source, defeating them, and rescue the Doctor and Susan.

1 February 1969: broadcast of second episode of The Seeds of Death. The Doctor, Zoe and Jamie head for the Moon by rocket; Miss Kelly T-Mats to the Moon and repairs the equipment but is captured by the Ice Warriors.

1 February 1975: broadcast of second episode of The Ark in Space. The humans on the Ark start to wake up; but Noah, their leader, has been infected by the Wirrn.

1 February 1982: broadcast of first episode of Kinda. The Doctor and Adric are captured by the Earth expedition on Deva Loka; Tegan's mind is ensnared by the wind chimes.

1 February 1983: broadcast of first epsiode of Mawdryn Undead