Whoniversaries 13 August

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When I first did these posts in 2010-11, I skipped this date because I could not find anything relevant. There still isn't much, but there's more than nothing.

i) births and deaths

13 August 2017: death of Victor Pemberton, the first person to have both written a Doctor Who story and also acted in one. He was also script editor of the show in 1967. He wrote Fury from the Deep (Second Doctor, 1968) and Doctor Who and the Pescatons (Fourth Doctor audio, 1976), and appeared as the minor character Jules Faure, a crewman who gets converted into a Cyberman, in The Moonbase (Second Doctor, 1967).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

None.

iii) dates specified in-universe

This is really clutching at straws. On 13 August 1945, Daniel O'Kane kills most of his family, as later recounted by his surviving brother to his long-lost son (see pic below) in P.R.O.B.E.: The Zero Imperative, which stars Caroline John as Liz Shaw and some other Whoniverse actors in other roles. The specific mention of 13 August is at the 48 minute mark. (Audio here is not very good but you can probably get a better copy easily enough.)

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From Barrows to Bypass: Excavations at West Cotton, Raunds, Northamptonshire, 1985-1989

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Following the early Saxon occupation the area was returned to agriculture, as shown by the cultivation horizon which accumulated over the early Saxon features. Apparently this persisted throughout the middle Saxon period. A single ditch may have formed a field boundary relating to this cultivation which divided the area along a line mid-way between the main palaeochannel and the southern course of the Cotton Brook. In the north-western corner of the site faint linear "features" may represent plough-furrows aligned parallel with the suggested field boundary.

Back in the autumn of 1985, when I was 18, I spent two months working as a volunteer on the dig at West Cotton, just outside the obscure village of Raunds in Northamptonshire. It was a growing experience for me – the first time I had been working outside of home (I was 18). Most of my fellow diggers were local unemployed people supplied by the Manpower Services Commission (as it then was), overseen by a trio of real archaeologists, Dave Windell, Andy Chapman and Jo Woodiwiss, who published this slim booklet about their initial findings a few years later. You can (probably) download it here.

West Cotton was known to have been an Anglo-Saxon settlement, which survived the Norman invasion and became deserted in the decades following the Black Death in the mid 1300's. It only gradually became apparent (and the first signs were there in my time) that this minor rise in the valley of the river Nene had also been a centre of Neolithic and Bronze Age ritual three thousand years earlier. In the initial phase of excavation, while I was there, it became clear that there was a three-ringed barrow under the highest point of the (low-lying) Saxon village; subsequent exploration uncovered a whole ritual landscape.


The site seems to have been little used once the Bronze Age properly kicked in, including through Roman times (in my day a Roman villa was discovered a few fields away). But in Saxon times it once again became a centre of activity, a farmstead built unknowingly where the ancestors had worshipped three millennia before.

Even in the early days of 1985, some fascinating finds were made. A number of flat stones were discovered with an engraved pattern of three suares connected by vertical and horizontal lines – boards for the ancient game of Nine Men's Morris. I wondered then if the all-England Nine Men's Morris Championships for the year 985 had taken place in West Cotton. Apparently the boards have now been dated to the end of the settlement in the village, ie 13th and 14th centuries, but I still wonder. (This graphic and the next photograph are from a different paper.)

Most poignant of all, one of the boards was found at the feet of the only representative art found on the site, which I remember causing much excitement when it was uncovered back in 1985 – a sculpture of a praying figure, some thought a knight (though I don't see any evidence of armour or arms). Did this come from the end of days in West Cotton, as the plague hit and the villagers realised that their way of life had become unsustainable? The look of concern and worry in the face of an incomprehensible pandemic speaks to us across the centuries. I leave you with this message from 650 years ago; we don't know exactly what it says, but we can make a darn good guess.

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Whoniversaries 12 August: John Nathan-Turner, Nev Fountain, Anne Tirard, Alec Wallis, The Middle Men

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12 August 1947: birth of John Nathan Turner, producer of Doctor Who for the last nine seasons of the classic run, starting with the Fourth Doctor's final season and continuing for the whole of the last three Doctors of Old Who. Controversial and colourful, like him or loathe him, nobody can dispute the depth of his influence on the show. I recommend Richard Marson's biography.

12 August 1969: birth of Nev Fountain, author of many tie-in media and Nicola Bryant's other half.

12 August 2003: death of Anne Tirard, who played Locusta the poisoner in the story we now call The Romans (First Doctor, 1965) and the Seeker in The Ribos Operation (Fourth Doctor, 1978).

12 August 2004: death of Alec Wallis, who played Leading Telegraphist Bowman in The Sea Devils (Third Doctor, 1972) and Warner the communications technician in Revenge of the Cybermen (Fourth Doctor, 1975).

ii) broadcast anniversary

12 August 2011: first showing of The Middle Men, sixth episode of the fourth series of Torchwood. Gwen and Rhys bust her father out of the Cowbridge camp, but when she reaches L.A. she gets a call to tell her that her family have been captured.

iii) date specified in-universe

Same picture as yesterday; apparently Wilmington emerged victorious over Kinsbroke on 12 August 1904, as seen in the 2008 Torchwood episode, From Out of the Rain.

vlcsnap-2020-08-09-12h34m51s505.png

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August 2007 books

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The first part of August 2007 was spent on holiday in Northern Ireland as usual, with MeCon a particular high point. My account of it here and here, but my favuourite picture, for sentimental reasons, is this one:

We got back to a very grim situation with B, which culminated in her being removed from the house at the end of the month by three burly ambulancemen to give us a break for a few weeks, still waiting for a permanent residential place to become available. In the meantime we got very little sleep, and were very stressed.

So I only read 13 books that month, mostly non-fiction.

Non-fiction 10 (YTD 57)
Licence Denied: Rumblings from the Doctor Who Underground, by Paul Cornell
From the Holy Mountain, by William Dalrymple
Real Fast Food: 350 recipes ready-to-eat in 30 minutes, by Nigel Slater
About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1975-1979, by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood
The Shadows of Eliza Lynch: How a Nineteenth-century Irish Courtesan Became the Most Powerful Woman in Paraguay, by Siân Rees
Not Quite the Diplomat, by Chris Patten
Missed Chances, by Roy Denman
Rethinking Europe's Future, by David P. Calleo
Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century, by Mark Leonard
Talkback: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Doctor Who Interview Book – Volume One: The Sixties, ed. Stephen James Walker

Non-genre 1 (YTD 24)
Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett

SF 1 (YTD 57)
Darkness Audible, by Graham Andrews

Comics 1 (YTD 16)
Preacher: Dixie Fried, by Garth Ennis

4,100 pages (YTD 53,100)
2/13 by women (YTD 46/180)
None by PoC (YTD 4/180)

I'm going to break my usual pattern and list the four books I most enjoyed this month: From the Holy Mountain, by William Dalrymple, which you can get hereReal Fast Food: 350 recipes ready-to-eat in 30 minutes, by Nigel Slater, which you can get hereAbout Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1975-1979, by Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood, which you can get hereNot Quite the Diplomat, by Chris Patten, which you can get here.

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Whoniversaries 11 August: Ron Grainer, John Gorrie, Peter Cushing, Derek Newark

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births and deaths

11 August 1922: birth of Ron Grainer, who composed the Doctor Who theme tune. According to the lore, he was so gobsmacked by Delia Derbyshire's electronic arrangement of the music that he asked her, "Did I really write this?" "Most of it," she replied. Of course he got the on-screen credit and she didn't. This is maybe how he would have expected it to sound:

11 August 1932: birth of John Gorrie, director of The Keys of Marinus (1964) and the third episode of The Reign of Terror (1964)

11 August 1939: birth of Ian Thompson, who played Hetra, leader of the Optera, in the story we now call The Web Planet (First Doctor, 1965) and Malsan the Aradian in the story we now call The Chase (also First Doctor, 1965).

11 August 1979: birth of Niky Wardley, who played Eighth Doctor audio companion Tamsin Drew in 2010-11, and also appears in the 2007 Comic Relief sketch with the Tenth Doctor and as Steven Moffat's receptionist in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot (2013).

11 August 1994: death of Peter Cushing, who played Doctor Who in Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966), and much else besides.

11 August 1996: death of Derek Newark, who played caveman Za in the story we now call An Unearthly Child (First Doctor, 1963) and engineer Greg Sutton in Inferno (Third Doctor, 1970).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

None.

ii) date specified in-universe

11 August 1901: eight people go missing from Chuirch Stretton, as reported in the 2008 Torchwood episode, From Out of the Rain.

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Whoniversaries 10 August: Peter Diamond, Kate O’Mara, Rex Tucker, The Dominators #1

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i) births and deaths

10 August 1929: birth of Peter Diamond, who was fight arranger for eight stories between The Dalek Invasion of Earth (First Doctor, 1964) and The Dæmons (Third Doctor, 1971), and played a number of minor parts of which the most important was Delos in The Romans (First Doctor, 1965).

10 August 1939: birth of Kate O'Mara, who played the Rani in The Mark of the Rani (Sixth Doctor, 1985) and Time and the Rani (Seventh Doctor, 1987).

10 August 1996: death of Rex Tucker, who directed The Gunfighters (First Doctor, 1966) but had also been an important force behind the scenes of the creation of Doctor Who in 1963. Following a dispute with Innes Lloyd his credit as producer was excised from episode 4 of The Gunfighters, so the on-screen evidence of his contribution to the show is even slimmer.

ii) broadcast anniversary

10 August 1968: broadcast of episode 1 of The Dominators, the earliest H2 start for any full Doctor Who season. The Second Doctor, Jamie, and new companion Zoe land on an island on the planet Dulkis; so do two sinister Dominators, Toba and Rago, with their robot servants, the Quarks; so do a group of young Dulkians led by Cully, who sees the Dominators casually kill off his friends and then tries to get help. At the end of the episode, the Quarks ask permission to destroy the Doctor and Jamie… The costuming of the native Dulkians is not the show’s finest hour.

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Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

'Whose writing is this?'

A year or so ago, the group of friends with whom I had previously read War and Peace and Anna Karenina at the rate of a chapter a day decided to give Charles Dickens’ last complete novel a go, but with the twist of reading each of the monthly installments of four to six chapters at the start of each month, simulating how the book’s original readers would have encountered it.

I bought it then, but failed to get with the programme when it started; then a couple of months ago Our Mutual Friend bubbled anyway to the top of two of my lists (books bought in 2018, and non-genre fiction) and so I joined the party rather late, catching up to where everyone else in the group had reached and then doing the monthly thing until we finished last week. I must say I did appreciate this format – the book was originally written to have mini-cliffhangers every few chapters, and saving the dénouements for four weeks does mean you savour them a bit more.

However, I confess I did not really get as much our of Our Mutual Friend as I did from our previous reads. None of the characters and little of the writing particularly grabbed me. The core plot is a chap who fakes his own death and then deceives his wife about who he really is, partly to test her character, which I find utterly repulsive behaviour, presented by Dickens as moral courage and heroism. (She passes the test, of course; Dickens is reticent about what would have happened if she had not.) The lower-class couple who had accidentally become rich joyfully surrender their undeserved fortune to our hero, which again I found rather grating. There are some meandering side plots on the banks of the Thames, upstream and in London, but they seemed to me both moralising and far-fetched.

There was one bit of writing that particularly caught me in Book 4 Chapter 11:

Then, the train rattled among the house-tops, and among the ragged sides of houses torn down to make way for it, and over the swarming streets, and under the fruitful earth, until it shot across the river: bursting over the quiet surface like a bomb-shell, and gone again as if it had exploded in the rush of smoke and steam and glare. A little more, and again it roared across the river, a great rocket: spurning the watery turnings and doublings with ineffable contempt, and going straight to its end, as Father Time goes to his. To whom it is no matter what living waters run high or low, reflect the heavenly lights and darknesses, produce their little growth of weeds and flowers, turn here, turn there, are noisy or still, are troubled or at rest, for their course has one sure termination, though their sources and devices are many.

In the middle of writing Our Mutual Friend, Dickens was caught up in a major train accident, escaping with only minor injuries himself but rescuing other victims, some of whom died in front of him. I found it really interesting that in this imagery of the train of agent of destruction and destiny, it is not the Christian God but the abstract Father Time who is invoked in the end.

This is not one of Dickens’ better-known works, and there’s good reason for that. But you can get it here.

(Our group will tackle the Gormenghast trilogy next, going back to the chapter-a-day paradigm.)

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Whoniversaries 9 August: Leaman, Charlton, Holley, Tovey, Wohlenberg, Real Time #2

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i) births and deaths

9 August 1920: birth of Graham Leaman who played four roles in five Old Who stories: the captive Controller in The Macra Terror (1967), Price the communications office in Fury from the Deep (1968), the Grand Marshall of the Ice Warriors in The Seeds of Death (1969), and an un-named Time Lord in Colony in Space (1971) and The Three Doctors (1973). (Some dispute whether it is actually the same Time Lord.)

9 August 1931: birth of Alethea Charlton who plays Hur in An Unearthly Child (First Doctor, 1963) and Edith in The Time Meddler (First Doctor, 1965). Here she is from the same angle in both stories.

9 August 1940: birth of Bernard Holley, who plays Peter Haydon in Tomb of the Cybermen (Second Doctor, 1967) and the voice of Axos in The Claws of Axos (Third Doctor, 1971)

9 August 1953: birth of Roberta Tovey who plays Dr. Who's granddaughter Susan Who in the two Peter Cushing films, and also recorded a justly forgotten single, "Who's Who".

9 August 1968: birth of Sanne Wohlenberg, producer for three Eleventh Doctor stories in 2010-11.

ii) webcast anniversary

9th August 2002: webcast release of the second episode of Real Time, in which one of the scientists has been transformed into a Cyberman and they all try to acquire the Tardis.

iii) dates specified in-universe

9 August 1794 is when the Doctor and disposable Time Lord companion Serena arrive in revolutionary France in Terrance Dicks' 2005 Second Doctor Season 6B novel, World Game.

9 August 1932 and 9 August 1945 are critical dates for the character Rita Hay in Mike Tucker and Robert Perry's 2003 Seventh Doctor novel Loving the Alien, the first being the day she was born and the second her 13th birthday when the UK used an atomic bomb (in a slightly divergent history of course).

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Amy Dillwyn was my third cousin once removed

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I’ve been passing the time over the summer evenings by delving a bit more deeply into genealogy, and was delighted to discover that I am related to Amy Dillwyn, Welsh lesbian campaigner, novelist and industrialist, who was my third cousin once removed.

Even though she was born in 1845 and my father in 1928, a combination of young parents on her side and older fathers on mine makes them the same generation of descendants from our common ancestors, John Whyte (1752-1814) and his wife Letitia (1755-?). To be specific:

Amy Dillwyn was born in 1845 (the third child of four) when her mother, Louisa Dillwyn née de la Beche was 27 and her father, later MP for Swansea, 34; my own father was born 83 years later, in 1928, the first child of a later marriage, when my grandfather was 48;

Louisa de la Beche was born in 1819 when her mother, Letitia de la Beche née Whyte, was only 18 (and starting an unhappy marriage to Sir Henry de la Beche, the geologist); 61 years later, my grandfather was born in 1880, the tenth child of thirteen from his father’s second marriage; his father was 53 when he was born;

Letitia Whyte was born in 1801 when her father, Charles John Whyte, was 24 (he had been disinherited for marrying a Protestant – things have changed, thank heavens – and died just a couple of years later leaving his younger wife pregnant with their third child); 25 years later, my great-grandfather was born in 1826 when his father was 42, again the first child of a later marriage;

Charles John Whyte was seven years older than his brother, my great-great-grandfather, born in 1777 and 1784 respectively. John and Letitia Whyte had eight sons (and two daughters); six of the eight sons died during the Napoleonic wars, including Charles John.

So I am the same generation as Amy Dillwyn’s nephews and nieces, born in the 1860s and 1870s, a hundred years before me.

Yugoslavia’s Implosion: The Fatal Attraction of Serbian Nationalism, by Sonja Biserko

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Second and third paragraphs of third chapter:

The Kosovo myth played a significant part in the creation of the modern Serbian state in the early twentieth century. St. Vitus' Day, which had been instituted in the nineteenth century in the belief that the Battle of Kosovo had been lost precisely on that day, was first celebrated as a national religious holiday in 1913, after the Turks had been decisively beaten. The holiday was said to honor the "chivalrous contest and the conquest of evil," and to symbolize a bloody, unsparing revenge against Turks and Muslims in general. The possibility of using St. Vitus' Day to abuse the Kosovo myth was pointed out in the 1970s by Miodrag Popović, who wrote:

The cult of St. Vitus' Day, which confuses historical and mythical reality, a genuine struggle for freedom and enduring pagan propensities (revenge, throat-slitting, oblation, worship of a heroic ancestor), contains potentially all the characteristics of environments marked by unbridled mythical impulses. As a phase in the development of national thought, it was historically necessary. But as a permanent state of the spirit, the cult of St. Vitus' Day can prove detrimental for those who are unable to disentangle themselves from its pseudo-mythical and pseudo-historical entanglements. In them, modern thought and man's spirit may experience a new Kosovo, an intellectual and ethical defeat.310

310 Miodrag Popović, Vidovdan i časni krst: ogled iz književne arheologije (St. Vitus' Day and the Holy Cross, an essay on literary archaeology), Belgrade 1976, pp. 131-32.

Detailed and carefully researched, by one of Serbia's most lucid human rights activists, this chronicles the sad history of how Serbian nationalism disintegrated Yugoslavia (more than once), and the ideological threads connecting the Yugoslav Army, the Orthodox church and Serbian nationalists both inside and outside the old Communist Party – three groups which were not automatically allies, but aligned themselves brutally to cause destruction.

Some will say that it's all the fault of the Slovenes and Croats for breaking away, but the record clearly shows that the concentration of power in the hands of Serbian leaders happened first, destroying the grand bargain which had sustained the old federation. It's particularly enlightening to read this account from a Serbian analyst, rather as the pages of Ha-Aretz provide the most interesting commentary on Israel.

I sort-of pop up between the lines on page 262, where Biserko writes:

Having sought but failed to persuade Belgrade to enageg in talks about Kosovo's final status, the international community decided to discuss the subject without Belgrade. A message to this effect, delivered in 2005 via the International Crisis group's (ICG) report on Kosovo's final status, raised a great hue and cry on the Serbian political scene.

Well, we weren't ever instructed by anyone to send a message to Belgrade; we were simply reporting the situation as we saw it, and also describing the only likely solution, which was to find a pathway to regularising Kosovo's situation (it was de facto already independent in 2005). Of course those of us working in the organisation all had our views, but what we were trying to do was to match the situation on the ground to the grand thrust of international diplomacy, and I think we did it rather well. The message we delivered to Belgrade was from reality, rather than from any particular capital city.

The book ends on an outdated note of optimism – when it was published in 2012, it seemed possible that Serbia was heading in a more democratic direction. That's no longer a sustainable view, with President Vučić and the Progressive Party dominating the political scene and crushing voices of dissent. Sonja Biserko remains uncrushed, and long may she remain so. You can get the book here.

This was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves. Next up is (again) Felicitas Corrigan's biography of Helen Waddell.

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Whoniversaries 8 August: George Cormack, John Baker, Terry Nation, Tom Georgeson, Pooja Shah

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i) births and deaths

8 August 1907: birth of George Cormack, who played King Dalios of Atlantis in The Time Monster (Third Doctor, 1972) and K'Anpo Rinpoche, Time Lord disguised as Buddhist abbot, in Planet of the Spiders (Third Doctor, 1974)

8 August 1917: birth of John Baker, who played a Time Lord in Colony in Space (Third Doctor, 1972) and Ralph the servant, one of several characters killed off early in the first episode of The Visitation (Fifth Doctor, 1982).

8 August 1930: birth of Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, writer of The Daleks (1963-64), The Keys of Marinus (1964), The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), The Chase (1965), Mission to the Unknown (1965), The Daleks' Master Plan (1965-66, with Dennis Spooner who always claimed to have done most of the work), Planet of the Daleks (1973), Death to the Daleks (1974), Genesis of the Daleks (1975), The Android Invasion (1976) and Destiny of the Daleks (1979), as well as the Peter Cushing films Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966). Not to mention Blake's 7.

A couple of years ago, a woman who I had just hired to work in my office spotted that I was a Doctor Who fan, and told me that she had grown up close to Nation in Kent, and had actualy played with the "real" Daleks as a child. If she had put that on her application letter, we could have skipped the rest of the interviewing process. (She has long since gone on to greater things.)

8 August 1937: birth of Tom Georgeson, who played Kaled scientist Kavell in Genesis of the Daleks (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and the hapless detective inspector in Logopolis (Fourth Doctor, 1981).

8 August 1979: birth of Pooja Shah, who played history teacher Miss Shah in two episodes of Class (2016).

8 August 1980: death of Simon Lack, who played the Master's sidekick Professor Kettering in The Mind of Evil (Third Doctor, 1971) and Swordmaster Zadek in The Androids of Tara (Fourth Doctor, 1978).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

8 August 1964: broadcast of "A Land of Fear", first episode of the story we now call The Reign of Terror. The Tardis lands in a quiet wood and the Doctor relents slightly from kicking Ian and Barbara off the Tardis; the team goes off to explore and enter an abandoned farmhouse. They realise that they have landed in Revolutionary France; the Doctor is knocked unconscious and the other three are captured by revolutionary militia, who set the building on fire as they leave, the Doctor trapped inside…

8 August 1985: broadcast of episodes 3 and 4 of Slipback on BBC radio. Peri lands safely on a pair of detectives, with whom she bickers for the next two episodes. Meanwhile the Doctor bickers with the computer for two episodes. And Eric Saward still thinks he is Douglas Adams.

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George Eliot, by Tim Dolin

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Eliot's journals also tell us a great deal about the everyday cultural lives of well-off, educated Victorians, the vital centres of Victorian high culture, the social networks in which it was produced, and the close relationship between cultural production and Victorian society. Eliot attends a performance of a Handel oratorio with a stalwart of the artistic establishment (Frederic Burton s portrait of Eliot was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1867). She views neoclassical paintings by Frederic Leighton (who had illustrated Romola) in a studio in Kensington fitted out to resemble a Turkish palace. She accompanies the architect Owen Jones (who designed the interior of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition, and the interior of the Leweses' new house, The Priory) to a show of archetypal English daily-life scenes by an Irish-born painter, William Mulready, showing in a museum founded by Prince Albert (whose idea the Great Exhibition was) and devoted to the celebration of Victorian industrial and cultural progress. While there they also visit the India Courts, interior spaces that, like Leighton's studio, replicate the architectural forms of Greater Britain (Jones, whose Grammar of Ornament (1856) incorporated design motifs from around the world, was the leading orientalist and functionalist among Victorian theorists of architecture and design). And like others of their class, they entertain, and they travel. She and Lewes take a short trip to Scotland—travelling first class on the train, no doubt—and Lewes retires into the countryside for a week or so before they regroup to spend the remainder of spring in Italy, where it was cheap, and where so many culturally acquisitive Victorians made their version of the Grand Tour, the cultural journey through Europe taken by generations of the wealthy English.

Good short readable survey of Eliot's life, work and influences, with chapters on politics, gender, religion and science. The last chapter looks at film and TV adaptations, concentrating on the 1994 BBC dramatisation (which maybe I should have a look at; Rosamund is played by my twin Trevyn McDowell). Am still not convinced that The Mill on the Floss is any good, but I might give Romola and Felix Holt a try (Middlemarch is in my medium-term plan anyway). You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2013. Next on that pile is Felicitas Corrigan's biography of Helen Waddell.

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Whoniversaries 7 August: Kenneth Kendall, Alexei Sayle, Shobna Gulati, Ric Felgate

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i) births and deaths

7 August 1924: birth of Kenneth Kendall, who appeared as a newsreader in The War Machines (1966), the first celebrity to portray himself on Doctor Who (unless you count the Beatles). He's also in 2001: A Space Odyssey in a similar role.

7 August 1952: birth of Alexei Sayle, who plays the DJ in Revelation of the Daleks (1986). 'Allo John, got a new motor? Is there life on Mars? Is there life in Peckham?

7 August 1966: birth of Shobna Gulati, who plays Yaz's mother Najia Khan in several Thirteenth Doctor stories (2018 and 2020).

7 August 1999: death of Ric Felgate, who appeared in three stories all directed by his brother-in-law Michael Ferguson. He was Roy Stone, an American journalist in The War Machines (First Doctor, 1966), Brent, killed by the Ice Warriors in The Seeds of Death (1969) and astronaut Charles Van Lyden, the first person seen on screen in The Ambassadors of Death (Third Doctor, 1970).

7 August 2014: death 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.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

None.

iii) dates specified in-canon

7 August 1941: setting of the WW2 bit of the Torchwood comic story Overture, published in the 25th and last issue of Torchwood Magazine, by Gary Russell with art by John Ridgway and letters by John Workman.

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Thursday reading

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Current
Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
Jerusalem, by Alan Moore

Last books finished
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
From Barrows to Bypass: Excavations at West Cotton, Raunds, Northamptonshire, 1985-1989, by Dave Wendell, Andy Chapman and Jo Woodwiss
The Secret in Vault 13, by David Solomons

Next books
The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel
East West Street, by Philippe Sands

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Whoniversaries 6 August: Ron Jones, Tom Macrae, Heritage

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i) births and deaths

6 August 1945: birth of Ron Jones, who directed Black Orchid (Fifth Doctor, 1982), Time-Flight (Fifth Doctor, 1982), Arc of Infinity (Fifth Doctor, 1983), Frontios (Fifth Doctor, 1984), Vengeance on Varos (Sixth Doctor, 1985) and Mindwarp (Sixth Doctor, 1986).

6 August 1980: birth of Tom Macrae, writer of Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel (Tenth Doctor, 2006) and The Girl Who Waited (11th Doctor, 2011).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

6 August 1966: the BBC announced that William Hartnell would leave the role of the Doctor.

iii) dates specified in-universe

6 August 6048: setting of all but the last two chapters of Dale Smith’s 2002 Seventh Doctor novel, Heritage.

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July 2007 books

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July 2007 was a fairly dramatic month. My mother-in-law came to stay with us to help with B, whose behaviour was becoming more and more challenging. She stayed in Belgium while the rest of us went on our usual holiday, taking in the two Roald Dahl museums in Buckinghamshire and Paul Cornell's birthday party. See also speculation on the future of Latveria, and local megaliths. Paul Cornell was not the only person to have a birthday that month.

Because of long journeys (also a work trip to Cyprus with crazy flight connections) and sleepless nights, I managed to read no less than 46 books that month.

Non-fiction 12 (YTD 47)
Vicious Circles and Infinity: An Anthology of Paradoxes, by Patrick Hughes and George Brecht
The Medieval Cookbook, by Maggie Black
The Making of Doctor Who, by Malcolm Hulke and Terrance Dicks
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, translated and with an Introduction by Benedicta Ward
The Desert Fathers: Translations from the Latin with an Introduction by Helen Waddell
The Megalith Builders of Western Europe, by Glyn Daniel
Asteroids: A History, by Curtis Peebles
The Nobel Prizes, by Burton Feldman
The Discovery of the Germ, by John Waller
George and Sam, by Charlotte Moore
The Republic, by Plato
Presidents I've Known and Two Near Presidents, by Charles Willis Thompson

Non-genre 5 (YTD 23)
Once in a Blue Moon, by Magnus Mills
Three To See the King, by Magnus Mills
Faith, by Joanna Trollope
Wilt in Nowhere, by Tom Sharpe (DNF)
The Successor, by Ismail Kadarë

SF (non-Who) 17 (YTD 56)
Something Rotten, by Jasper Fforde
The Mind of Mr Soames, by Charles Eric Maine
The Stories of Hans Christian Andersen, translated and edited by Jeffrey Frank and Diana Crone Frank
Harpist in the Wind, by Patricia A. McKillip
The Sharing Knife: Legacy, by Lois McMaster Bujold
What Ifs?™ of American History, edited by Robert Cowley
Earth is Room Enough, by Isaac Asimov
City of Illusions, by Ursula Le Guin
The Afterblight Chronicles: Kill or Cure, by Rebecca Levene
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling
Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Deathbird Stories, by Harlan Ellison
Coyote Dreams, by C.E. Murphy
The Guardians, by John Christopher
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapledon
The Female Man, by Joanna Russ

Doctor Who 8 (YTD 23)
Doctor Who: the Visual Dictionary, by Andrew Darling, Kerrie Dougherty, David John, Simon Beecroft, and Amy Junor
Doctor Who – the Caves of Androzani, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who and the Deadly Assassin, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who and the Planet of the Spiders, by Terrance Dicks
Doctor Who and the Leisure Hive, by David Fisher
The Sorcerer's Apprentice, by Christopher Bulis
City at World's End, by Christopher Bulis
Doctor Who [The Novel of the Film], by Gary Russell

Comics 3 (YTD 15)
Pussey!, by Daniel Clowes
Doctor Who: The Iron Legion
Albion, by Alan Moore, Leah Moore and John Reppion

11,000 pages (YTD 49,000)
14/46 by women (YTD 44/167)
None by PoC (YTD 4/167)

If I have to pick two of these as particularly good, my choice is feminist sf classic The Female Man by Joanna Russ, which you can get here, and a mother's account of living with two autistic sons, George and Sam by Charlotte Moore, which you can get here. Wooden spoon to Wilt in Nowhere which bored and repelled me in the first 100 pages, but you can get it here.


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Whoniversaries 5 August: Wanda Ventham, Matt Jones, Paul Kasey, Brian Minchin,

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i) births and deaths

5th August 1935: birth of Wanda Ventham, who played Jean Rock in The Faceless Ones (1967), Thea Ransome and the Fendahl Core in Image of the Fendahl (1977) and Faroon in Time and the Rani (1987), a nice regular spacing of her appearances over the decades.

5th August 1968: birth of Matt Jones, author of TV stories The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit (Doctor Who, 2006) and Dead Man Walking (Torchwood, 2008), as well as the excellent Bernice Summerfield story Beyond The Sun (novel, 1997; audio play, 1998).

5th August 1973: birth of Paul Kasey, who has played literally dozens of short monsters in New Who and its spinoffs, and has appeared in 70 episodes of Doctor Who, Torchwood and the Sarah jane Adventures, which I think may be more than anyone else..

Last but by no means least, 5th August 1978 saw the birth of Brian Minchin, script editor for the first two series of Torchwood and for eight episodes of New Who, assistant producer of Torchwood: Children of Earth last year, and producer of the next series of Sarah Jane Adventures. He is also my first cousin. Happy birthday, Brian!

He'll probably kill me for this, but here he is, aged 15, at my wedding in 1993.

ii) broadcast and cinema dates:

5th August 2011: broadcast of The Categories of Life (Torchwood). One of the most horrific moments of the Whoniverse as new-ish character Vera Juarez gets burnt to a crisp.

iii) date specified in-universe

5th August 1975: birth of Jack Harkness's daughter Alice Carter (as revealed in Torchwood: Children of Earth ep 3 in 2009). I'm sure it's pure coincidence that that is also assistant producer Brian Minchin's birthday.

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Listen to the Moon, by Michael Morpurgo

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

Never had it taken so long to row up Tresco Channel, Alfie thought. He was quite sure by now that the girl must be dead, so much so that he could hardly bring himself to look at her. Close to tears all the time, he did not trust himself to speak. He kept catching his father’s eye, then looking away fast. He could not tell him how cold she was in his arms, how still, that she was gone.

A lovely children's book set on the Scilly Islands during the first world war. A young girl is found alive on the shore, but unable to talk. A hospitable family takes her in, but there is hostility from some in the community who think that she is German. Meanwhile the war continues to exact a horrible toll on the islands. No big surprise – the ending is signalled very far in advance – but well told. You can get it here.

This was my top unread book acquired in 2014. Next on that pile is The Inside of the Cup, by the other Winston Churchill.

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Whoniversaries 4 August: Martin Jarvis, Fenella Woolgar, Maurice Colbourne, the Twelfth Doctor

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i) births and deaths

4th August 1941: birth of Martin Jarvis who played Hilio in The Web Planet (1963), Butler in Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974), and the Governor in Vengeance on Varos (1985).

4th August 1971: birth of Fenella Woolgar who played Agatha Christie in The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008).

4th August 1989: death of Maurice Colbourne who played Lytton in Resurrection of the Daleks (1984) and Attack of the Cybermen (1985).

ii) broadcast anniversary

4th August 2016: Peter Capaldi is announced as the Twelfth Doctor.

iii) date specified in-universe

From Paul Cornell's (excellent) 1992 Seventh Doctor novel Love and War, which introduced Bernice "Benny" Summerfield:

 Benny pulled a thick volume from the stuffed bookshelf behind the Doctor. Resting it on her lap, she found a place with her finger and began to read. 'August the fourth. This is my diary, by the way . . .'
   'Is this relevant?'
   'Oh yes, very. This is from a year when I had a tremendous crush on a young research assistant. "Dear Diary, I hate myself. And I'm afraid that means I hate you too. Those who read this will just have to get used to a deterioration in our relationship" '
   The Doctor was smiling. 'Do you often stage readings?'
   'Yes, and I annotate all over the place, and sometimes I go back and stick notes over the bits I don't like. I don't want to erase them, so you can peel off the note, but I want to offer a . . . a new version, I suppose. This is one of those pieces. Here's where we get on to the note. This is the new version.' Benny peeled off a scrap of pink paper and read it out. 'I took Ian out dancing, to the Elderstrasse Ballroom, and it was great. He told me that I was like a sister to him, which was very flattering.' She sighed, and crumpled the note up. 'History is written by the winning side. That's why nobody in this century has ever heard of Exeter City.'
   'Ah . . . ' The Doctor looked puzzled once more.
   'This, however, is what really happened. I took Ian dancing, had a few too many glasses of wine, told him that I loved him and got real y hurt when he told me he thought of me as a sister. I ran out down the steps and ruined a perfectly good dress in the fall. A Styhian beggar helped me out of the gutter. I told him that we were both looking at the stars, and gave him most of my cash.' Benny thumped the book closed. 'So what do you think?'
   'The real version's better.'

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Guban, by Abdi Latif Ega

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Second paragraph of third chapter:

In this spirit, Tusmo went immediately to a prominent member of weight in the affairs of the clan in the dislocation of the city. Somal’s clan system was based on patrilineal blood relationships, complemented differently by matrilineal blood relations. The male blood line, however, and thus the male, dominated clan affairs. Though Tusmo was particularly aggrieved in the case of her husband’s sudden arrest, Hoagsaday’s clan could never be represented by her.

Last year, I had a brief foray into Somali politics, and bought this book to get myself in the zone. It's a detailed portrayal of Somali politics and society. The protagonists, Haogsaday and Tusmo, are separated by Hoagsaday's sudden and unexplained arrest; the two of them take different odysseys through the Horn of Africa, intersecting with the bigger political story of their country (the date is not given but I an guessing late 1980s). The disruption of the family unit matches the disruption of their nation, though the point is not belaboured too heavily. I was certainly educated.

I'm afraid that I was deterred at first by the poor editing and formatting. The book needed a thorough proof-reading in English – too many homophones or near-homophones used. And the Kindle format includes page breaks for each print page, complete with header and footer, which is very disruptive to the flow of the reading process. As far as I can tell the book was self-published, and the author is apparently working on a second book – I hope he brings in another pair of eyes next time. Anyway, you can get it here.

This was my top unread book by a non-white author. Next on that pile is Palestine +100, edited by Basma Ghalayini.

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