Whoniversaries 5 November

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

5 November 1953: birth of Malcolm Kohll, who wrote Delta and the Bannermen (Seventh Doctor, 1987)

5 November 1983: birth of Andrew Hayden-Smith who played Jake in Rise of the Cybermen, The Age of Steel, and Doomsday (all Tenth Doctor, 2006).

5 November 1971: birth of Chris Addison, who played Seb, Missy's AI ally,  in The Caretaker, Dark Water and Death in Heaven (Twelfth Doctor, 2014).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

5 November 1966: broadcast of first episode of The Power of the Daleks. Ben and Polly are getting used to the mysterious new bloke in the Tardis; they land on the planet Vulcan where Stevenson has been experimenting with Daleks from a crashed ship.

5 November 1977: broadcast of second episode of Image of the Fendahl. The mysterious skull is taking over Thea, terrifying Mrs Tyler, and forces the Doctor to touch it in agonising pain.

5 November 2006: broadcast of Cyberwoman (Torchwood), the one with the, er, Cyberwoman.

5 November 2007: broadcast of second episode of Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (SJA). Maria's father saves her and Sarah Jane from the Trickster; poor Andrea remains drowned.

5 November 2009: broadcast of first episode of The Eternity Trap (SJA). Clyde, Rani and Sarah investigate the mysterious manor of Lord Marchwood and Erasmus Darkening (Luke gets a week off).

5 November 2016: broadcast of Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart (Class). April's deadbeat father turns up, and she uses unearthly powers on him, ending up in the Underneath herself but getting some fun with Ram along the way.

Posted in Uncategorised

This Must be the Place, by Maggie O’Farrell

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

At the sound of his father's car coming around the corner, Niall steps sideways, twice, then back, a move that reminds him of the knight on a chessboard, and conceals himself behind a pillar.

Slightly rambling story of blended families, broken relationships, tragedies and reconciliation. Amused by the counterfactual train journey across the border from Donegal to Derry in the first chapter. (Those lines were all closed in the 1950s.) Nice jigsaw of narratives which did fit together in the end. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2016. Next on that pile is The Anything Box, by Zenna Henderson.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 4 November

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

4 November 1971: birth of Robyn Moore who plays Jorjie's mother June Turner in K9 (2009-2010).

4 November 1982: death of Talfryn Thomas, whose birthday we noted just a few days ago; he played the hospital porter Mullins in Spearhead from Space (Third Doctor, 1970) and miner Dave Griffiths in The Green Death (Third Doctor, 1974).

4 November 1998: birth of Bear McCausland, who played Jack's ill-fated grandson Steven in Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009). I doubt if I will note any more recent birth than his.
4 November 2017: death of Dudley Simpson, composer extraordinaire. Here's his incidental musifc for The Invasion of Time (Fourth Doctor, 1978).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

4 November 1967: broadcast of sixth episode of The Abominable Snowmen. The Doctor and friends destroy the Yeti controls, and Padmasambhava dies cutting the Intelligence's link to earth. Travers spots a real Yeti.

4 November 1978: broadcast of second episode of The Stones of Blood. The stones attack Boscombe Hall, and Vivien Fay attacks Romana, who disappears into thin air.

4 November 2018: broadcast of The Tsuranga Conundrum, which I remember watching in a hotel room in Heathrow while winding down from a weekend of Worldcon planning. The Thirteenth Doctor and her friends end up stranded without the TARDIS on a hospital ship in space, with a strange and potentially deadly intruder on board, it is up to them, the crew, and the patients to figure out what it is, what it wants, and how to stop it before the creature tears the ship apart.

Posted in Uncategorised

The Tropic of Serpents, by Marie Brennan

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Natalie. I would have preferred to delay my promise to Lord Hilford, but if I was to leave in two weeks, I simply could not spare the time. “Thank you,” I said, distracted, and went upstairs.

I quite enjoyed the first in this series (nominated en bloc for the 2018 Hugo) when I read it, but was rather less wowed by the second installment and will skip the rest. Our plucky hero, in a parallel Victorian era England, goes to her world's version Africa for adventures and dragons. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2018. Next on that list is Greybeard, by Brian Aldiss.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 3 November: Richard Hurndall, Creature From The Pit #2, Mark of the Berserker #1

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

3 November 1910: birth of Richard Hurndall, who played the First Doctor in The Five Doctors (1983).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

3 November 1979: broadcast of second episode of The Creature from the Pit. Adrasta interrogates Romana and K9; the Doctor, now in the Pit, meets Organon and then the Creature.

3 November 2009: broadcast of first episode of Mark of the Berserker (SJA). Clyde's father turns up and takes possession of a peculiar pendant found by Rani and Luke.

NB that Jocelyn Jee Esien, playing Clyde's mother, is only eight years older than Daniel Anthony, playing Clyde.

Posted in Uncategorised

230 days of plague – the Royal Library and the girls

Posted on by

In the spring I found it very grounding to develop the discipline of writing every ten days about what has been happening under the new lockdown. Hopefully the same will be true this time round as well.

There is little to be cheerful about right now. The number of COVID-19 patients in hospital passed the April peak on Thursday; the number of patients in intensive care will pass the April peak tomorrow. The death rate remains mercifully lower; perhaps those who were most vulnerable to the virus in March are already dead. There are some signs of deceleration. Today the announced weekly average number of infections, at 15,582, was less than yesterday's 15,967, the first day-on-day decrease in this indicator since 29 September (when it fell to 1,540 from 1,551). However since the testing methodology was changed a week ago, it's not a real shift.

In the spring, the lockdown hit on 17 March, and the peak of hospitalisation was reached on 6 April, 20 days later; the peak in intensive care on 8 April, 22 days later; and the peak of fatalities on 12 April, 26 days later. The current lockdown was introduced 17 days ago, so by this time next week, if the pattern is repeated, we should be at around the maximum. Quite probably we have another week of increasing numbers to look forward to. (Yes, I have been tweeting the numbers every day since late April, with a break during the good times in July, in a thread that is now about 200 tweets long.)

When I wrote my last post in this series, ten days ago, museums were still open and I hastily booked a trip to the Royal Library, expecting that this might be my last chance for a while (correctly, as it turned out that they closed last Monday for the duration). I had been to the Royal Library once before, to look at a manuscript back in 1992; they now have a lovely exhibit about the book collections of the Dukes of Burgundy which form the basis of the collection. I brought little U, who does not have much time for books but enjoys a walk, and my Romanian friend C met us there. U took it in her stride, as she usually does.

There is some really gorgeous stuff on display in the Royal Library, and I do recommend a visit once things open up again. The best manuscripts seemed to be collected in a single small well-concealed exhibit space. Just look at this:

That's North Africa from Ptolemy's Geographia, a manuscript from 1482. The two pages shown above are both widely available around the internet, but there is something fantastic about seeing them in their original context, as part of a book. (Click to embiggen.)

Note the dragon in the Libyan desert!

This last weekend was, of course, Halloween, and I brought U into Brussels again, where my generous employers had provided masks for us to hygienically dress up in.

(The little green Android always comes too.)

I took half a morning off on Thursday to visit B, taking advantage of the fact that the rules have not yet prevented us seeing the girls as was the case last time. Basically what has changed is that the residential centre where the girls live now feels on top of the need to ensure sanitised and hygienic conditions for both residents and visitors. In the spring that was not the case, as hospitals were (rightly) getting first dibs on stocks of masks etc. I usually take B out for a drive when I see her; this time we went to the nearby park at Hélécine.

On the one hand, it's all a bit easier to deal with this time, as we've been through it before. On the other, the nights are getting longer rather than shorter, and every couple of days I hear of another friend, colleague or acquaintance who has caught it. I should note also that six weeks ago the virus claimed the life of David Cook, one of my political mentors. It's not over yet, and it won't be for some time.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 2 November

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

2 November 1936: birth of Andrew Staines, who played Benik's sergeant in The Enemy of the World (Second Doctor, 1968), Goodge in Terror of the Autons (Third Doctor, 1971), the Captain in Carnival of Monsters (Third Doctor, 1973) and Keaver in Planet of the Spiders (1974). He was a nephew of Barry Letts, the show's producer for the Pertwee years.

2 November 1952: birth of Michael Kerrigan, who directed Battlefield (Seventh Doctor, 1989) and also the 2008 Sarah Jane Adventures stories The Day of the Clown and Secrets of the Stars.

2 November 1977: birth of John Pickard, who plays the very annoying Thomas Brewster, audio-only companion of the Fifth and Sixth Doctors.

2 November 2017: death of Paddy Russell, who directed The Massacre (First Doctor, 1966), Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Third Doctor, 1974), Pyramids of Mars (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and Horror of Fang Rock (Fourth Doctor, 1977) – a pretty good record.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

2 November 1968: broadcast of first episode of The Invasion. The Tardis lands invisibly, and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe seek help successively from Isobel Watkins, and Tobias Vaughn of International Electromatics.

2 November 1981: BBC broadcast repeat of "An Unearthly Child", the very first episode of Doctor Who, kicking off the "Five Faces of Doctor Who" repeat season.

2 November 1987: broadcast of first episode of Delta and the Bannermen. Ken Dodd sends the Doctor and Mel to 1950s Wales where a holiday camp is being infiltrated by aliens.

2 November 1988: broadcast of first episode of The Happiness Patrol. Helen A rules Terra Alpha ruthlessly by killing anyone who is unhappy, supported by the sinister yet ridiculous Kandyman.

2 November 2010: broadcast of second episode of The Empty Planet (SJA). Clyde and Rani's new friend Gavin turns out to be an alien prince (not the last we'll see in a Who spinoff) and once this is revealed and the msinister robots placated, everyone returns to the Earth. A good Clyde/Rani episode.

iii) dates specified in canon

2 November 1657: death and burial of Richard Maynarde, as described in Silver Nemesis (1988).

Posted in Uncategorised

Helen Waddell, by D. Felicitas Corrigan

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Until 1845 Ireland had but one University, Trinity College, Dublin. Founded in 1591 on the site of the Augustinian monastery of All Hallows confiscated under Henry VIII, its avowed aim was to conquer Popery and establish a Protestant nation — a somewhat tough proposition. In 1633, in an effort to speed up the process, Laud, Wentworth, and the Provost of Trinity, William Chappell, introduced new Anglicized statutes, inaugurated fresh acts of repression against Catholics,and imposed on the protesting Fellows a completely English style of life modelled on Oxford and Cambridge. In the century that followed, Trinity reached its peak of expansion and achievement. It saw the graduation of men who are its glory: Jonathan Swift 1667-1745; George Berkeley 1685-1753; Edmund Burke 1729-97; Oliver Goldsmith 1730-74; Henry Grattan 1746-1820; and Theobald Wolfe Tone 1763-98. With the exception of ‘poor Poll’, these sprang from the ranks of ruling Anglo-Irish Protestants, yet were all alike Irish patriot-agitators: they fought for liberty, free trade for Ireland, the reform of the land laws, and the granting of Catholic relief. The limited success that attended their efforts was pretty well cancelled out by the Act of Union of 1800, which ushered in a century of political and economic upheaval. By the early nineteenth century, Trinity had become not only an exclusive but also an expensive Protestant stronghold.

This is a lovely lovely biography of Helen Waddell (1889-1965), a medievalist from Northern Ireland (though born in Tokyo wher her grandfather was a missionary). She hit the big time in 1927 with the publication of her book The Wandering Scholars, and had several more successes in the next ten years, including a novel about Peter Abelard, before the war distracted her and, sadly, from 1950 she was no longer in mental shape to continue writing.

It’s a story with a lot of sadness. Her father and mother both died when she was a girl; she was left caring for her stepmother in a very small house in North Belfast. Two brothers died in the first world war. She was quite explicitly blocked by her gender from getting the lectureship at Queen’s that she was surely entitled to. She found love only late in her life, with her publisher Otto Kyllman.

And yet at the same time her prose breathes enthusiasm and love for her subjects which is just hugely effective. Her first book, Lyrics from the Chinese (1913) is online; in her introduction she makes it clear where her heart really lies.

IT is by candlelight one enters Babylon; and all roads lead to Babylon, provided it is by candlelight one journeys. It was by candlelight that John Milton read Didorus Siculus, and by the Third Book he had voyaged beyond the Cape of Hope and now was past Mozambic, and already felt freshly blowing on his face

‘Sabean odours from the spicie shore
Of Arabie the blest.’

It was by candlelight that the sea coast of Bohemia was discovered, and the finding of it made a winter’s tale.  Baghdad is not a city to be seen by day; candlelight is the only illumination for all Arabian nights.

One sees most by candlelight, because one sees little. There is a magic ring, and in it all things shine with a yellow shining, and round it wavers the eager dark. This is the magic of the lyrics of the twelfth century in France, lit candles in ‘a casement ope at night,’ starring the dusk in Babylon; candles flare and gutter in the meaner streets, Villon’s lyrics, these; candles flame in its cathedral-darkness, Latin hymns of the Middle Ages, of Thomas of Celano and Bernard of Morlaix. For if Babylon has its Quartier Latin, it has also its Notre Dame. The Middle Ages are the Babylon of the religious heart.

It is difficult to overstate just how big a cultural figure she was in Britain in the years before the second world war. She received honorary degrees from Columbia, Queen’s Belfast, Durham and St. Andrews (this for someone who Queen’s had failed to hire twenty years earlier), and went to lunch with Queen Mary in 10 Downing Street at the invitation of Stanley Baldwin. Curiously, she never particularly intersected with fellow Ulster exile C.S. Lewis; each of them has a couple of notes of bumping into the other at dinners or parties, but they were not friends.

Anne developed a real enthusiasm for her a couple of years ago, and now after reading this I think I’ll start reading her works as a mini-project myself. One interesting thing that I have already noticed from poking around her available work on the online second-hand market: a lot of the available copies of her shorter, rarer works are inscribed in her own hand. Here, for instance, is her sister’s copy of Lyrics from the Chinese:

Here’s in token of the day
You and I will go away,
      You and I alone.
And on some soft summer night
Through the dusk, and candle-light
      Enter Babylon.

Peg,
With the aforesaid young woman’s love.
Dec. 10th 1913

I admit also that part of her attraction for me is her proximity to my own roots. As a child and young woman, she would escape Belfast to her relatives in Ballygowan House, which is on literally the next hill over from my own ancestral home. In a speech to Banbridge Academy (the school which my second cousins attended), she spoke of

“all this countryside that Banbridge lies at the heart of, names that are themselves like an old folk song or a come-all-ye, Closkelt and Ballyroney, Annabawn and Drumgooland, Loughbrickland and Donaghmore; Ouley and Ballooley, Kilmacrew and Ballygowan and Dromore; these are the names that I heard from my aunts around the fire, and these were the houses where my great-grandfathers went courting my great-grandmothers.”

Once Ballygowan passed out of family hands, her refuge became her sister’s house at Kilmacrew on the other side of Banbridge, where her brother-in-law was the local minister, and their great-granddaughter still keeps her great-great-aunt’s spirit alive. She was kind enough to be hospitable to me, Anne and Anne’s mother a couple of years back.

If the embedding has worked, you should be able to hear Helen’s voice here in a BBC talk from 1955, when she was already very ill, speaking propped up between her lover and her sister. (If the embedding doesn’t work, you can get it here.)

She eventually died in London in 1965, but rests near Kilmacrew in Magherally churchyard with her great-grandmother. The inscription is hard to read these days, but I give a transcription below, including the eccentric capitalisations.


Here resteth the remains
of her whose name in youth was
Jane DONWOODY,
married to Ebenezer Martin
23rd Decemr. 1801
and after a short life
Pleasantly spent in the ways of
Religion, strict and tender
Attention to her near Relatives,
Departed 22nd May 1815 aged 41,
Leaving seven children
and a disconsolate Husband
Waiting to follow.

Here also resteth their great grand-daughter
Helen WADDELL, M.A., D.Litt., younger daughter of
Rev. Hugh Waddell, Tokio, Japan,
born 31st May 1889, died 5th March 1965.
Scholar, Author, Poet. She lifted A veil from the past.
her Prose Made its Saints and Scholars Live Again.
Her English verse
Made lovely lyrics of their Latin Songs.
Her life Enriched all who Knew Her.
“The Light is on Thy Head.”

The biography is, as I said, a lovely lovely book and you can get it here.

Edited to add: this BBC radio programme about her is great listening.

This was the last unread book on my shelves that I acquired in 2013, and I am really kicking myself for not getting to it sooner. I read the last unread book on my shelves acquired in 2012 in May, the last book of 2011 just over a year ago, the last book acquired in 2010 in January 2019, and the last book acquired in 2009 at the end of 2016. Finishing this opens up my 2014 lists, starting with The Company Articles of Edward Teach/Angaelien Apocalypse by Thoraiya Dyer (the shortest), Above/Below by Stephanie Campisi (the longest lingering unread sf book), Selected Prose by Charles Lamb (the longest lingering unread non-fiction) and The Inside of the Cup by the other Winston S. Churchill (both the longest lingering unread non-genre fiction and the most popular on LibraryThing).

October Books

Posted on by

Non-fiction: 3 (YTD 44)
Darwin's Island: The Galapagos in the Garden of England, by Steve Jones
Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, by M. Mitchell Waldrop
Helen Waddell, by Felicitas Corrigan

Fiction (non-sf): 9 (YTD 34)
Kramer vs. Kramer, by Avery Corman
Secret Army, by John Brason
Secret Army Dossier, by John Brason
Ordinary People, by Judith Guest
Secret Army: The End of the Line, by John Brason
This Must be the Place, by Maggie O'Farrell
Kessler, by John Brason
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, by Robert M. Pirsig

sf (non-Who): 6 (YTD 92)
Palestine 100: Stories from a century after the Nakba, ed. Mazen Maarouf
Gateway, by Frederik Pohl
Carmilla, by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
To Be Taught, if Fortunate, by Becky Chambers
The Tropic of Serpents, by Marie Brennan
Wild Life, by Molly Gloss

Doctor Who: 1 (YTD 11)
The Knight, the Fool and the Dead, by Steve Cole
B088KQYGBB.01._SX180_SCLZZZZZZZ_[1].jpg

Comics: 6 (YTD 39)
Defender of the Daleks, #1, by Jody Houser and Roberta Ingranata
Survivants, Tome 3, by Leo
Defender of the Daleks, #2, by Jody Houser and Roberta Ingranata
Survivants, Tome 4, by Leo
Survivants, Tome 5, by Leo
For the Love of God, Marie!, by Jade Sarson
DotD1.jpg DotD2.jpg

5,900 pages (YTD 58,800)
9/25 (YTD 69/219) by women (Corrigan, Guest, O'Farrell, Chambers, Brennan, Gloss, Hoser/Ingranata x2, Sarson)
1/25 (YTD 19/219) by PoC (Maarouf)
4/25 reread (YTD 34/219) – Titus Groan, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Gateway, To Be Taught, if Fortunate

Current
Ash: A Secret History, by Mary Gentle

Coming soon (perhaps)
Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville
Borderline, by Mishell Baker
SS-GB, by Len Deighton
Painless, by Rich Larson
After Me Comes the Flood, by Sarah Perry
"The Persistence of Vision", by John Varley
The Company Articles of Edward Teach/Angaelien Apocalypse, by Thoraiya Dyer
Above/Below, by Stephanie Campisi
Selected Prose, by Charles Lamb
The Inside of the Cup, by the other Winston S. Churchill
Planetfall, by Emma Newman
The Anything Box, by Zenna Henderson
Tono-Bungay, by H. G. Wells
Utopia For Realists, by Rutger Bregman
Greybeard, by Brian Aldiss
Kaamelott: Het Raadsel Van de Kluis, written by Alexandre Astier, art by Steven Dupré
Goodbye To All That, by Robert Graves
Foucaults Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Doctor Who: The Thirteenth Doctor Volume 1: A New Beginning, by Jody Houser, Rachael Stott, Giorgia Sposito, Enrica Eren Angiolini

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 1 November

Posted on by

i) broadcast anniversaries

1 November 1975: broadcast of second episode of Pyramids of Mars. Scarman and the mummies chase the Doctor and Sarah around the Priory.

1 November 1980: broadcast of second episode of Full Circle. The Marshmen take the Tardis, with Romana inside it, and she gets to meet the spiders at close quarters.

1 November 1986: broadcast of first episode of Terror of the Vervoids (ToaTL #9), and first appearance of Bonnie Langford as Mel. She and the Doctor investigate mysterous goings on aboard the spaceliner Hyperon III.

1 November 1989: broadcast of second episode of The Curse of Fenric. Mysterious goings-on with Millington and the Haemovores.

1 November 2010: broadcast of first episode of The Empty Planet (SJA). Everyone has disappeared, apart from Rani, Clyde and their new friend Gavin.

1 November 2014: broadcast of Dark Water. Poor Danny is killed, run over by a car. Dead? Or Cyberman?

ii) date specified in canon

1 November 1930: setting of Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks (Tenth Doctor, 2007)

Posted in Uncategorised

Chariots of Fire

Posted on by

Chariots of Fire won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1981, and also three others, Best Original Screenplay (Colin Welland), Best Costume Design and Best Original Score. Raiders of the Lost Ark, which also won that year’s Hugo, won five Oscars (one of which was a special award) to Chariots of Fire‘s four.

The other Oscar-nominated films were Raiders of the Lost Ark and three I haven’t seen, Atlantic City, On Golden Pond and Reds. IMDB users rank Chariots of Fire astonishingly low, 14th on one list and 29th on the other, lower than last year’s Ordinary People which itself was the lowest agrregate rating since Tom Jones. Apart from Chariots and Raiders, I seem to have seen only four other films from that year, An American Werewolf in London, Time Bandits, Tarzan the Ape Man (the one with Richard Harris and Bo Derek, where the actor originally hired in the title role was fried and replaced by his stunt double, with dismal results) and Diva. For once, I am in profound disagreement with IMDB users, and total agreement with Oscar voters; I’d put Chariots of Fire firmly at the top of that list. Here’s a trailer, with a very annoying American voice-over.

In case you don’t know, it’s the story of two British runners at the 1924 Olympic Games, one Jewish and one deeply Christian, who both find themselves struggling against the English establishment as well as against their notional international competitors. I was surprised by how emotionally I reacted to it. To an extent it’s the film’s associations for me – I remember going to the cinema with my father to see it, when he would have been exactly the same age that I am now; and a few years later watching it again with Shirley Hart and Colin Wilkie, who died earlier this month. Since then, of course, it has extra nostalgia for me because of the Cambridge scenes. My college was Clare, not Gonville and Caius, but I knew enough people there to have happy memories of the courts. Also one could occasionally see Stephen Hawking trundling in or out. Even putting all of that aside, it’s a beautiful film, it looks good, it sounds good, and I felt better after having watched it.

I did not find any actors in Chariots of Fire who had previously been in other Oscar-winning films, which is a bit astonishing. I found two who had been in a previous Hugo winners. More obviously, Ian Holm, who is the coach Sam Mussabini here and was the android Ash in Alien two years ago.

Less obviously, Jeremy Sinden, here the President of the Gilbert and Sullivan Society but also the rebel pilot Gold Two in Star Wars.

Less astonishingly there are several crossovers with the Whoniverse (though the last of these may surprise you). To start with two appearances in Who, Peter Cellier, the snooty head waiter at the Savoy, was also to play Andrews, the head of security at Heathrow Airport, in the 1982 Fifth Doctor story Time-Flight.

More obscurely and with a much longer gap, Eric Liddell’s friend Sandy McGrath is played by Struan Rodger, who went on to provide the voice of the Face of Boe in the Tenth Doctor stories Gridlock (2006) and New Earth (2007), the voice of Kasaavin in the Thrteenth Doctor story Spyfall (2020) and appeared on screen as Ashildr’s butler Clayton in the Twelfth Doctor story The Woman Who Lived (2015).

Nicholas Farrell is of course Aubrey Montague here. In Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009), he plays the British prime minister, Brian Green.

Cheryl Campbell plays Eric Liddell’s sister Jennie here, and in 2010 played alien conspiracy theorist Ocean Waters in Vault of Secrets, a Sarah Jane Adventures story.

And last but definitely not least, Nigel Havers is of course Lord Andrew Lindsay here and appeared as Peter Dalton, manipulated by the sinister Trickster into marrying the title character in The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (2009) and still looking good.

OK, to start with the usual: one black person is visible in the entire film, an American athlete who does not speak, is not named and doesn’t appear to be credited.

And the women’s roles are clearly second rank to the men’s: Eric’s sister and mother, Harold’s girlfriend and her fellow performers. Having said that, both Jennie and Sybil are anchors to the real world, with all its flaws, for Eric and Harold; their presence makes it clear that while their commitment to their athletic pursuits comes at a cost. (Er, let’s not mention the Mikado.)

All right. But there’s some interesting stuff going on here all the same. Harold is constantly dealing with microaggressions about his Jewishness; I think Chariots of Fire presents this more effectively in a quarter of the story line than Gentleman’s Agreement did in an entire film.

It’s also interesting that Eric’s commitment to religion is shown almost entirely positively. It’s actually rather rare to have a film that shows religion in a positive light. The only other Oscar-winner where it is a really important theme is the otherwise forgettable Going My Way (1944) (with maybe half a point for The Sound of Music). I must say I was particularly moved by Eric’s first race, knowing as I now do that he would die in a prisoner of war camp aged 45, and that Ian Charleson who plays him would die even younger, at 40, the first British celebrity to make it public that his death was due to AIDS.

And anyway the film looks and sounds just fantastic. In case you need to be reminded, here’s the main theme. It is amazing how the 1980s tehcno synth almost always matches and carries the 1920s setting.

With famous interweaving by Mr Bean and Sebastian Coe for the Olympics opening ceremony in 2012:

And look, here’s the B side of the original single, Eric’s theme again.

As I said, I found this an unexpected pleasure, and I am putting it right at the top of my table, behind An American in Paris but ahead of Rebecca , so currently in fourth place overall.

Next year’s Oscar winner was Gandhi, but the Hugo winner is more popular on IMDB, so it’s Blade Runner next.

Winners of the Oscar for Best Picture

1920s: Wings (1927-28) | The Broadway Melody (1928-29)
1930s: All Quiet on the Western Front (1929-30) | Cimarron (1930-31) | Grand Hotel (1931-32) | Cavalcade (1932-33) | It Happened One Night (1934) | Mutiny on the Bounty (1935, and books) | The Great Ziegfeld (1936) | The Life of Emile Zola (1937) | You Can’t Take It with You (1938) | Gone with the Wind (1939, and book)
1940s: Rebecca (1940) | How Green Was My Valley (1941) | Mrs. Miniver (1942) | Casablanca (1943) | Going My Way (1944) | The Lost Weekend (1945) | The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) | Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) | Hamlet (1948) | All the King’s Men (1949)
1950s: All About Eve (1950) | An American in Paris (1951) | The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) | From Here to Eternity (1953) | On The Waterfront (1954, and book) | Marty (1955) | Around the World in 80 Days (1956) | The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) | Gigi (1958) | Ben-Hur (1959)
1960s: The Apartment (1960) | West Side Story (1961) | Lawrence of Arabia (1962) | Tom Jones (1963) | My Fair Lady (1964) | The Sound of Music (1965) | A Man for All Seasons (1966) | In the Heat of the Night (1967) | Oliver! (1968) | Midnight Cowboy (1969)
1970s: Patton (1970) | The French Connection (1971) | The Godfather (1972) | The Sting (1973) | The Godfather, Part II (1974) | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) | Rocky (1976) | Annie Hall (1977) | The Deer Hunter (1978) | Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)
1980s: Ordinary People (1980) | Chariots of Fire (1981) | Gandhi (1982) | Terms of Endearment (1983) | Amadeus (1984) | Out of Africa (1985) | Platoon (1986) | The Last Emperor (1987) | Rain Man (1988) | Driving Miss Daisy (1989)
1990s: Dances With Wolves (1990) | The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | Unforgiven (1992) | Schindler’s List (1993) | Forrest Gump (1994) | Braveheart (1995) | The English Patient (1996) | Titanic (1997) | Shakespeare in Love (1998) | American Beauty (1999)
21st century: Gladiator (2000) | A Beautiful Mind (2001) | Chicago (2002) | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) | Million Dollar Baby (2004, and book) | Crash (2005) | The Departed (2006) | No Country for Old Men (2007) | Slumdog Millionaire (2008) | The Hurt Locker (2009)
2010s: The King’s Speech (2010) | The Artist (2011) | Argo (2012) | 12 Years a Slave (2013) | Birdman (2014) | Spotlight (2015) | Moonlight (2016) | The Shape of Water (2017) | Green Book (2018) | Parasite (2019)
2020s: Nomadland (2020) | CODA (2021) | Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) | Oppenheimer (2023)

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

WHOOOOniversaries 31 October: Planet of Giants #1, K9 #1, Zygon Invasion

Posted on by

A third of the way through the year, and although these posts don’t get a lot of feedback, I’m enjoying them for myself which is the main thing.

i) births and deaths

31 October 1922: birth of Talfryn Thomas, who played the hospital porter Mullins in Spearhead from Space (Third Doctor, 1970) and mine Dave Griffiths in The Green Death (Third Doctor, 1974).

31 October 1958: birth of Ian Briggs, who wrote the Seventh Doctor stories Dragonfire (1987) and The Curse of Fenric (1989).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

31 October 1964: broadcast of “Planet of Giants”, first episode of the story we also now call Planet of Giants, starting Season 2 of Classic Who. The Doctor, Ian, Susan and Barbara arrive in contemporary England, but miniaturised; they witness a murder and face peril from a cat.

31 October 2009: broadcast of Regeneration, the first episode of the K9 spinoff series. In a totalitarian London in 2050, where civilisation has degenerated so badly that most people now speak with Australian accents, K9 Mark 1 appears, regenerates, and teams up with teenagers Starkey and Jorjie.

31 October 2015: broadcast of The Zygon Invasion. The peace between humans and Zygons is breaking down…

[update]

31 October 2021: broadcast of The Halloween Apocalypse. The Doctor and Yazz meet Dan Lewis; the Lupari protect Earth from the Flux.

September 2008 books

Posted on by

September 2008 was the start of our new lives as Belgian citizens, a mere five months after applying. In other family news, my sister C had her baby daughter S, still my youngest relative on that side of the family. I started the month in Slovenia, as noted, and also travelled to Salzburg for another conference. No photos this month, as far as I can see.

My plan to read the whole of Shakespeare's plays was getting well under way by now. I was combining reading the scripts with listening to the Arkangel Complete Shakespeare, a methodology that I would strongly recommend (though I deviated from it in a couple of cases).

Non-fiction 6 (YTD 51)
Uit het Verleden van de Gemeente Oud-Heverlee, by Erik Martens
How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton
Becoming Somaliland, by Mark Bradbury
Zlata's Diary: a child's life in Sarajevo, by Zlata Filipović
Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and the Conflict of Cultures, 1470-1603, by Steven G Ellis
In The Land Of Israel, by Amos Oz

Non-genre 2 (YTD 19)
Mystic River, by Dennis Lehane
Peter Abelard, by Helen Waddell

Scripts 7 (YTD 11)
The Second Part of King Henry the Sixth, by William Shakespeare
The Third Part of King Henry the Sixth, by William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of King Richard the Third, by William Shakespeare
A Comedy of Errors, by William Shakespeare
Titus Andronicus, by William Shakespeare
The Taming of the Shrew, by William Shakespeare
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, by William Shakespeare

SF 5 (YTD 35)
The Ill-Made Mute, by Cecilia Dart-Thornton
Walking Dead, by C.E. Murphy
Love and War, by Paul Cornell
The Golden Transcendence, by John C. Wright (did not finish)
Expiration Date, by Tim Powers

Doctor Who 4 (YTD 160)
The Stone Rose, by Jacqueline Rayner
The Infinity Doctors, by Lance Parkin
Alien Bodies, by Lawrence Miles
Feast of the Drowned, by Stephen Cole

6,900 pages (YTD 69,900)
5/24 (YTD 34/298) by women
none (YTD 6/298) by PoC

Hugely enjoyed Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, which you can get here, and How Proust Can Change Your Life, which you can get here. I really did not like either The Taming of the Shrew, which you can get here, or The Golden Transcendence, which you can get here.


Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 30 October: Myth Makers #3, Deadly Assassin #1, Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith #2

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

30 October 1978: death of Brian Hayles, writer of The Celestial Toymaker (First Doctor, 1966), The Smugglers (First Doctor, 1966), The Ice Warriors (Second Doctor, 1968), The Seeds of Death (Second Doctor, 1969), The Curse of Peladon (Third Doctor, 1971) and The Monster of Peladon (Third Doctor, 1974).

30 October 1997: death of Sydney Newman, without whom etc etc.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

30 October 1965: broadcast of "Death of a Spy", the third episode of the story we now call The Myth Makers. Steven and Vicki are imprisoned by the Trojans; the Doctor designs the wooden horse and it is brought into the city.

30 October 1976: broadcast of first episode of The Deadly Assassin. The Doctor returns to Gallifrey to try and prevent the assassination of the President – but fails.

30 October 2009: broadcast of second episode of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith. The Doctor, Luke, Clyde and Rani are trapped in a time slip; Sarah persuades Peter to restore normality at the cost of his own life.

iii) date specified in canon

30 October 1938: the Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard land in Manhattan and encounter Orson Welles, as told in the Big Finish audio Invaders from Mars (2002).

Posted in Uncategorised

Thursday reading

Posted on by

Current
Titus Groan, by Mervyn Peake
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, by Robert M. Pirsig
Ash: A Secret History, by Mary Gentle
For the Love of God, Marie!, by Jade Sarson

Last books finished
This Must be the Place, by Maggie O'Farrell
Wild Life, by Molly Gloss
Kessler, by John Brason

Next books
Borderline, by Mishell Baker
SS-GB, by Len Deighton

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 29 October: the First Doctor regenerates (also Gareth Thomas, Nigel Havers)

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

29 October 1935: birth of Michael Jayston, who played the Valeyard in 1986.

29 October 2010: death of Mervyn Haisman, co-author of The Abominable Snowmen, The Web of Fear and (uncredited) The Dominators (all Second Doctor, 1967-8)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

29 October 1966: broadcast of fourth episode of The Tenth Planet. The Cybermen are defeated, but when Ben and Polly return to the Tardis, the Doctor collapses and his face shimmers and changes. Will Doctor Who ever be the same again???

29 October 1977: broadcast of first episode of Image of the Fendahl. The Doctor and Leela are drawn to Fetch Priory, where scientists are performing experiments on the skull whose nickname is Eustace.

29 October 2006: broadcast of Ghost Machine (Torchwood), the one with the gizmo that lets you see into the past, and Gareth "Blake" Thomas as an elderly sex criminal.

29 October 2007: broadcast of first episode of Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (SJA). Sarah has been mysteriously replaced by a woman called Andrea Yates, and only Maria remembers her. The answer lies in a 1962 seaside trip via the Graske.

29 October 2009: broadcast of first episode of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (SJA). Sarah is in love with the handsome Peter: as the wedding ceremony gets underway, the Tardis materialises, the Doctor appears and the Trickster kidnaps the newlyweds.

29 October 2016: braodcast of Nightvisiting, the third episode of Class and for my money the best. Young Tanya is visited by her father who died two years ago. Of course, it is but the latest alien threat, but it's very well done indeed.

Posted in Uncategorised

Short genealogical note on Frederic Whyte’s parents

Posted on by

Just so I don’t lose it, a note on the genealogy of the writer Frederic Whyte (1867-1941), who was both my first cousin thrice removed and my second cousin twice removed, both links via his father.

It turns out that there’s another link, and it’s another two steps sideways and one up; Frederic was my fourth cousin once removed via his mother. She was born Mary Jane Comyn in Holywell, near Kilfenora in County Clare, in 1834 and lived to 1912. Her mother, Margaret Helena Skerritt (1806–1879) was the second cousin of her husband, Henry Frederick Whyte (1830–1883).

Margaret Skerritt’s mother, Mary Jane Roche (1774–1821) was the first cousin of Henry Whyte’s father, Edward Whyte (1785–1837), the guy who got the law rewritten so that he could be both a Catholic and a naval officer.

Mary Roche’s mother, Margaret Whyte (1745?-1805) was the sister of Edward Whyte’s father, John Whyte (1752-1814). Both were children of Charles Whyte (1714-1784) and Anastasia O’Dunne (born ?1732, date of death not known).

So Frederic Whyte’s parents were second cousins once removed. They would probably have known it too.

Posted in Uncategorised

Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos, by M. Mitchell Waldrop

Posted on by

Second paragraph of third chapter:

It was about time. By that point Cowan and his colleagues had begun to hire a small cadre of staffers for the institute, thanks to operating funds that were beginning to trickle in from sources such as the MacArthur Foundation. And those staffers desperately needed a space to call their own. Furthermore, what with the economics meeting coming up and several other workshops being planned, the institute desperately needed a little office space where it could keep its academic visitors happy with desks and telephones. Cowan decided that the convent was small, but workable—and came at a price that was too good to pass up. So in February 1987, the institute staff moved in. And within days they had filled the tiny space to overflowing.

This is a breezy introduction to the interdisciplinary topic of complexity, but I confess I had not realised that it is almost thirty years old, having been published in 1992. It's also a bit too heavily skewed to covering the academic politics of setting up the Santa Fe Institute and not really all that detailed on the core points of what complexity theory actually is, and why it might be useful. So I didn’t learn all that much from it, and I think I'll have to keep looking for a good introduction to the topic. You can get it here.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 28 October: Ian Marter, Matt Smith, Abomble Snowmen #5, Stones of Blood #1, Arachnids

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

28 October 1944, 28 October 1986: birth and death of Ian Marter, who played companion Harry Sullivan in 1974-5, and also wrote nine Target novelisations.

28 October 1982: birth of Matt Smith, an actor who I am told appeared in some new New Who episodes and one Sarah Jane Adventures story in the early 2010s.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

28 October 1967: broadcast of fifth episode of The Abominable Snowmen. Victoria is hypnotised by Padmasambhava; the monks evacuate; and the Intelligence grows in physical manifestation. (Yeah, I posted this plot summary last week mistakenly for episode four. Again.)

28 October 1978: broadcast of first episode of The Stones of Blood, the 100th story of Old Who. The Doctor and Romana find archaeologist Amelia Rumford and local druidic cultists all very interested in the Nine Sisters, a stone circle on Dartmoor.

True fact: Christopher Isherwood dedicated Goodbye to Berlin, on which the musical Cabaretwas partly based, to Beatrix Lehmann and her brother. She died less than a year after The Stones of Blood was shown.

28 October 2018: broadcast of Arachnids in the UK. The gang return to Sheffield, which a crazed American millionaire has infested with spiders.

Posted in Uncategorised

Survivants, tomes 3-5, by Leo

Posted on by

Second frame from third page of tome 3:


Hakim: Stop, Selkert! Manon doesn't like the spotlight. You'll make her blush.
Selkert: Apologies! But you can be proud of what you have done.

Second frame from third page of tome 4:


Antac: I'll turn around. We need an attack plan!

Second frame from third page of tome 4:


Manon: Hmm, it's like it wanted to warn us about a danger that could come from the sea.
I read the first two volumes in this set of five last year and liked them. The second part of the storuy continues in the same veing – the young folks stranded on a hostile alien planet, with friends (such as the catlike Hollorans Antac and Selkert) and enemies. I felt it petered out a bit in terms of momentum – there's a lot of capturing, getting rescued and running away – and in the end there's a somewhat awkward bridge to the rest of the series, but redeemed by a bittersweet ending, and anyway always gorgeous to look at and as naturalistically realised as a story about life on alien planets can be.

Manon: Twelve beers please.
Waiter: Twelve? There are only seven of you..
Max: Yes, but we want twelve beers all the same.
Djamile: And chips. A mountain of chips.

You can get the French originals here, here and here, and the English translations here, here and here. (Covers below are French, but link to the English.)

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted on by

Posted in Uncategorised

Whoniversaries 27 October

Posted on by

i) births and deaths

27 October 1923: birth of Peter Bryant, producer of Doctor Who from The Web of Fear (1968) to The Wheel in Space (1969)

27 October 1991: death of Paul Erickson, writer of The Ark (1966)

ii) broadcast anniversaries

27 October 1979: broadcast of first episode of The Creature from the Pit. The Doctor is captured by Adrasta; Romana is captured by the bandits and then by Adrasta; the Doctor is thrown down the Pit.

27 October 2009: broadcast of second episode of Secrets of the Stars (SJA). Trueman attempts to summon the Ancient Lights, but is thwarted by Sarah and company.

Posted in Uncategorised