Sun, 18:07: RT @JolyonMaugham: Use the police to prevent the media uncovering illegality says Tory MEP. Inch by inch, Brexit moves us towards fascism.…
Mon, 08:12: RT @BBCgmu: Today is the last day for submissions to the @BCNI2018 on proposed changes for our constituencies. We look at the potential imp…
Luckily their two are the best of the four. L.M. Myles’ title story, “Breaking Bubbles”, has the Tardis crew coming to the aid of a political prisoner – but it turns out that she may have been imprisoned for very good reasons, and there is a nice navigation of ethics and responsibilities on all sides.
I may be getting old, but I found Mark Ravenhill’s “Of Chaos Time The” rather difficult to follow, and I did listen to it twice.
Una McCormack’s “An Eye for Murder” takes us to the fictional St Ursula’s College in 1939 as war clouds darken the horizon. It packs a huge amount of plot into quite a short space and nicely reverses the Peri/Doctor dynamic as he is treated as her assistant by the women academics.
Finally, I am perhaps a bit too close to the subject matter of Nev Fountain’s “The Curious Incident of the Doctor in the Night-Time” to appreciate it; missing parents, fake garden gnomes and autism. Probably those with less of a stake will enjoy it more.
Three guest actors to note. Johnny Gibbon, who starred in the West End version of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, reprises the same role adapted to the Whoniverse and does it rather well. Jemma Churchill is brilliant as the prisoner in “Breaking Bubbles” and the college principal in “An Eye for Murder”. And Andy Secombe, son of Harry (and therefore uncle of our former au pair) is reassuringly solid as the antagonist in “Breaking Bubbles” and the policeman in “An Eye for Murder”.
Sat, 19:54: RT @kevinhorourke: If Russia had not been on the agenda this would have been the big news. Good that EUCO confirmed what everyone outside t…
Sat, 20:20: RT @Mikeggibbs: Paul McCartney: “One of my best friends was killed in gun violence. Right round here. So it’s important to me.” #MarchForO…
Sat, 20:48: What’s in the LoveBoth leaflets https://t.co/KdOx1Sabbr For Irish friends and relatives: debunking of the pro-life arguments.
How Green Was My Valley won the Oscar for Outstanding Motion Picture in 1941, the first of three years in which the award had that name. It got a total of ten Oscar nominations, and apart from Outstanding Motion Picture also won in Best Director (John Ford, for the third of four times), Best Supporting Actor (Donald Crisp as Gwilym Morgan), Best Art Direction (Black and White) and Best Cinematography (Black and White).
Infamously, the Oscar voters ranked it ahead of Citizen Kane, which is now universally ranked as the best film of 1941 (or indeed as the best film of all time by some), and also The Maltese Falcon, which is ranked second on both IMDB systems. Dumbo is third on both systems; How Green Was My Valley makes fourth place on one system but only seventh on the other. At present writing, the whole film is on Youtube here. Here is a contemporary (but post-Oscars) trailer.
I’m not going to make invidious comparisons with Citizen Kane, but I wasn’t especially blown away by this, and in my personal ranking of Oscar-winning films it’s going just above the midpoint, below Grand Hotel and above Gone With The Wind (which loses points for racism). A lot of other people like it more than I did, and I’m pondering why I bounced off it. I feel in the end that the tone is emotionally uneven; the overall story is one of family tragedy, as the younger generation are lost to industrial accident and emigration, and I didn’t feel that the freight of the plot was sufficiently reflected in the script or incidental music. Maybe tastes have changed (and maybe my tastes are just weird), but the various tragic events of the film seem to just happen and then life moves on to the next tragic event. Maybe real life is actually like that.
The choral music is good, but I found the orchestral music sometimes unreasonably chirpy; judge for yourself in this video (whose owner has disabled embedding).
It is a film that tries to grapple with the economic issues of the Great Depression: some of the miners go on strike, some are sacked because cheaper workers are available from the ranks of the unemployed elsewhere, the owner’s son gets his pick of the local girls, fatal accidents are all too common. Yet this is moored in a framing narrative which seems positive and nostalgic, suggesting that the problems all happened later than the time being remembered:
There is no fence nor hedge around time that is gone. You can go back and have what you like of it, if you can remember. So I can close my eyes on my valley as it is today, and it is gone, and I see it as it was when I was a boy. Green it was, and possessed of the plenty of the Earth. In all Wales, there was none so beautiful. Everything I ever learned as a small boy came from my father and I never found anything he ever told me to be wrong or worthless. The simple lessons he taught me are as sharp and clear in my mind as if I had heard them only yesterday. In those days, the black slag, the waste of the coal pits, had only begun to cover the sides of our hill. Not yet enough to mar the countryside, nor blacken the beauty of our village, for the colliery had only begun to poke its skinny black fingers through the green.
Another part of my problem is that the book is set over a period of several years in the lives of the Morgan family (father, mother, six sons and one daughter), so the viewpoint character, youngest son Huw, starts as a young schoolboy and by the end has turned down a university place to work down the mine. Huw is played by Roddy McDowell, in the first of his major screen roles. The film was released just after his thirteenth birthday so he would have been twelve while it was being made. I think it’s a tremendously assured performance, but the fact is that the plot needs him to be several years older by the end of the story.
I’m not going to be too curmudgeonly. The film looks fantastic (apparently they decided to do it in black and white when they realised that the colours of the California vegetation are insufficiently Welsh).
The performances are generally excellent, although (perhaps unsurprisingly) nobody sounds very Welsh. In particular, Donald Crisp and Sara Allgood are great as the Morgan parents Gwilym and Beth; he won an Oscar for it, and she was nominated.
Anna Lee (left) as daughter-in-law Bronwen and Maureen O’Hara (right) as daughter Angharad are very luminous (though apart from Huw the brothers are rather interchangeable). Indeed, the film gets rather good marks for the portrayal of women – Beth goes and confronts the men of the village on a political issue (though she is wrong and they are right) and poor Angharad marries the wrong man and is sympathetically treated by the script.
Walter Pidgeon is also tremendous as the preacher Mr Gruffudd, mentor to Huw and thwarted suitor of Angharad, though he (perhaps wisely) does not even attempt to disguise his New Brunswick origins.
A lovely Irish factoid which I found on IMDB (backed by the Irish Times): John Loder, who plays the oldest Morgan son, Ianto, and Arthur Shields, who plays the creepy deacon Mr Parry, had fought on opposite sides in the 1916 Easter Rising. Shields, then aged 20, was subsequently interned in Frongoch, getting an early involuntary exposure to Wales; Loder’s father, General W. H. M. Lowe, was the general to whom Padraig Pearse surrendered – indeed, Loder, aged 18, was present at the surrender and was detailed to accompany Pearse in the staff car that drove him to Kilmainham. About a third of the way through the film they confront each other – Loder is on the right of the first of these two shots. One hopes that they had got over any residual differences in the intervening 25 years.
And let’s finish, literally, on a high note: here is the performance of Cwm Rhondda which opens the film.
Next up is Mrs Miniver, of which I know nothing at all.
The book is much much better than the film. The second paragraph of the third chapter is:
We learnt sums and letters, some history and the names of towns and rivers and where they were. Mrs. Tom Jenkins had come from Caernarvon where her father had been a book seller, so, of course, she knew a lot.
The characterisation of the Morgan siblings is much better; the politics makes a lot more sense; the change in the economics of mining over the decades of the story is well conveyed; the spoil tip, ever increasing in size, hangs over the village as an ominous threat (this in a book written thirty years before Aberfan); eveyone actually sounds Welsh. It is an effective portrayal of the violent, oppressive society where an unmarried mother is outcast while the father of her child gets sympathy (and even attending a theatrical performance can lead to disgrace). In one particularly chilling chapter, a young girl is murdered and the killer is quickly identified and lynched by the villagers. Llewellyn built a myth about himself from the book that may not have been entirely true, but considered as a Bildungsroman conveying a fictional time and place, I think it is a great book. You can get it here.
Fri, 12:56: RT @The3Million: “There are tentative reasons for optimism. And that’s not something we often say when it comes to the Home Office” says @I…
Fri, 13:31: RT @davidallengreen: The Abolition of 2016 Act 1. The year 2016 shall be and is hereby abolished. 2. The votes for Brexit and Trump shall…
Fri, 19:39: RT @JenniferMerode: Merkel and Macron’s faces when asked about number of Germans in top EU jobs, inc Martin Selmayr. Merkel spoke of her h…
Second paragraph of third story (“Cold”, by Mark Gatiss):
Then the dream was gone, Anna, and it was morning. Outside, the snow howled like an animal. And like an animal it beat and tore and hammered at the walls of the Hut. I opened one eye just a little – a thin, pink line – and then shut it tight again. I didn’t want to move.
Ten authors listed here, all of them men; no women among the artists either. It’s a straightforward book of short stories featuring the Tenth Doctor and Donna (apart from the last two, in which Ten on his own links up with a plucky lad for adventure), none terribly memorable and none awful either, with art that varies from OK to good.
Having said that none of the written stories are awful, I am dubious about the comic strip, by Jonathan Morris with art by Rob Davis, in which it turns out that the terracotta army are disabled robots previously under the control of a cyborg Chinese emperor. Maybe better not to recast other cultures’ achievements as “really’ alien technology.
Thu, 12:44: RT @aoifewhite101: Brussels roads to be paralyzed by anti-Uber taxi protest on March 27. Great, as if regular public transport strikes and…
Thu, 15:29: RT @EuropeElects: EU28: Vote share for Liberals (ALDE) 10 years ago vs. today shows increased support in Spain and France while decrease in…
Thu, 15:29: RT @EuropeElects: EU28: Vote share for G/EFA–parties 10 years ago vs. today shows bigger support in west-european than in east-european cou…
Thu, 16:12: Awful story of how Brexit has affected one long-term resident of the UK and her family. (Thread) https://t.co/8ukbaiEsb3
Thu, 18:36: RT @JenniferMerode: Lib Dems in trouble with @ALDEgroup who have issued official rebuttal – “at the ALDE leaders meeting of 22 March no sta…
I had one other survival technique: I sometimes said things that made the other boys laugh. When this happened I inmediately experienced a moment of warmth, of acceptance, of feeling ‘Maybe I am all right, after all.’ Peter Cook always said that he quite deliberately staved off bullying by being funny. I think in my case it was less a conscious activity – more ‘Oh, that felt nice.’ And, as I relaxed, I became funnier, of course, because the spark was always there. So the bullying faded away, and I started, for the first time, to make friends.
This is the autobiography of John Cleese, up until the first day of Monty Python, starting with his birth and childhood in Weston-Super-Mare, then on to Cambridge and his early career in London (and to an extent in New York), with occasional flashforwards to more recent happenings. I was familiar with some of the basics already from Roger Wilmut's 1980 book From Fringe to Flying Circusau pair for a few months back in 2002 – she hadn't mentioned it before she arrived, and, needless to say, I was blown away when she told us.)
I hadn't realised, though it's fairly obvious, that Cleese almost became a teacher, and indeed taught posh boys at his former school both immediately before and after his studies at Cambridge. That explains part of how he does so well in Clockwise. He explains his frustration with his mother all too well. And he attempts to explain the mysterious process of writing and performing – he feels that he is much better at the former than the later, which does make one wonder if this is another mistaken self-perception – if he was really such a bad performer, people would hardly continue asking him to do it!
Anyway, I found this an interesting insight into the dynamics of Cleese's own personality and his engagement with Python, and I hope that he will continue the story in a future volume. You can get this one here.
This was both my top unread non-fiction book, and my top unread book acquired in 2015. Next on those lists respectively are The Road to Middlemarch, by Rebecca Mead, and Looking for JJ, by Anne Cassidy.
Wed, 12:56: RT @foreignoffice: The nerve agent came from Sweden, Ukraine did it to frame Russia, It was contamination from the UK’s own research facili…
Wed, 13:54: RT @JJenkinsSJB: Jacob Rees-Mogg cannot board his Brexit boat because no one asked TFL’s permission, and the boat is now just going around…
Wed, 17:57: RT @KeohaneDan: This analysis, by my former boss @CER_Grant, is sound as far as it goes…but in my view omits a few very important factors…
Thu, 10:45: RT @odekul: I had my benefits sanctioned because I was having seizures so missed a JSA appointment. I ended up in hospital twice that week.…
See that girl, hear her scream, kicking the dancing queen. It’s not that! Everett seethed inside. Clown Control to Mao Tse Tung . . . Major Tom! Everett wanted to shout. Major Tom Major Tom Major Tom. Get it right. The song was forty years old but Everett knew it better than his mum. There was a word for misheard lyrics. Everett had come across it online: a mondegreen. He’d liked the word. He remembered it.
A decent YA novel from Ian McDonald, whose protagonist finds himself on a quest for his lost father, slipping between universes to a steampunk parallel reality, though London remains London whichever universe it is in. It was interesting to read this at the same time as Nina Allan’s The Rift, which deals with similar themes in a very different way. You can get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2013; next on that list is Your Code Name Is Jonah by Edward Packard.
Tue, 16:03: RT @Locke4MP: @nwbrux Same here. My friends and I used to walk off before our PE lessons and find a music cupboard to hide in and jam out.…
Tue, 16:04: RT @RobotArchie: @njj4 @nwbrux Exactly my experience but in retrospect I wonder if this is just the mirror image of the lack of help given…
Tue, 16:13: RT @damonwake: Good turnout for Albanian PM Edi Rama at the European Parliament. His message: we really want to join, you need our enthusia…
Tue, 19:04: RT @EZaharievaMFA: Going in the right direction in #Brexit negotiations but nothing is sure until the end. Agreement & consensus are needed…
Tue, 20:43: RT @ClarkeAward: Past Clarke Award judge @nwbrux has a crack at using reader data to predict this year’s Clarke Award shortlist https://t.c…
Tue, 22:00: RT @NrnIrnGirl1981: Ethna, Cathy & I cycled to Narrowwater. It was a lovely ride although it drizzled for a bit on the way back. We hope to…
If the forces of darkness became too powerful, the White Guardian was able to use the Key to reset the balance. Otherwise the universe would fall under the control of the Black Guardian and slip into eternal chaos – with Time itself perhaps ceasing to have meaning.
Promotional video:
This is really rather gorgeous – clearly rips off the British Museum's excellent podcast and book with similar titles, but a good idea is worth stealing imitating. Tribe and Goss list 100 important objects in the Whoniverse in chronological order (ie from the early universe to the far future, passing through the 1960s and 2000s en route), mentioned in TV stories from 1963 to 2012; each entry recapitulates the story or stories in which the particular object appears, but then also looks at other stories with similar themes (eg space arks) and even at sources of inspiration for the originating writers. The whole thing is beautifully illustrated. Definitely at the top end of the Doctor Who reference book range. Get it here.
Tue, 09:04: RT @JP_Biz: December: ‘We agree there should be a backstop option in the Withdrawal Agreement.’ February: ‘We don’t agree with this legal t…
Tue, 09:05: RT @jonworth: This is spot on. “Brexit analysis: Deal is a holding of the line for Ireland” by @patricksmyth1 How yesterday’s “deal” in Br…
Tue, 11:30: RT @David_K_Clark: @nwbrux We used to get sent on cross country runs in the middle of winter. If the snow was too deep, boys and girls were…
Tue, 11:44: RT @njj4: @nwbrux I didn’t mind PE so much, because that was indoors and mostly involved just running around a bit. But I hated sport. Rugb…
Tue, 11:53: RT @njj4: @nwbrux Some years later it turns out that actually I like running and am not too bad at it. With a bit more support and training…
Tue, 11:54: RT @b_judah: Recently at her party conference, I listened to Marine Le Pen call for smashing the GAFA — Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple.…
Tue, 11:54: RT @Iainbking: @nwbrux And me. PE and so called ‘games’ was awful. It inspired in me a life long interest in all things non-sport related.
Tue, 11:55: RT @greensideknits: @nwbrux My favourite ever school PE report read “Catherine always tries hard”. Said it all.
Tue, 11:57: RT @greensideknits: @nwbrux My point exactly. My ability to fly completely under the PE teachers’ radar had been achieved…
Tue, 11:59: RT @AdrianHiel: @nwbrux Didn’t like it at all. Overweight and lousy at sports in school. But in my 20s moved to Belgium and with the right…
Current Julian, by Gore Vidal The Legends of River Song, by Jenny T. Colgan, Jacqueline Rayner, Steve Lyons, Guy Adams and Andrew Lane How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn Free Radical, by Vince Cable
Last books finished The Missy Chronicles, by James Goss, Cavan Scott, Paul Magrs, Peter Anghelides, Jacqueline Rayner and Richard Dinnick The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver
Next books Jade City, by Fonda Lee No Going Back To Moldova, by Anna Robertson
Sun, 12:15: RT @JolyonMaugham: I have just learned that the Home Office has put a temporary stop on deportation proceedings “to try to find a way forwa…
Sun, 21:42: RT @EuropeElects: EU28: Vote share for Social Democrats (S&D) 10 years ago vs. today shows decreased support especially in western and midd…
Mon, 09:49: RT @GylesB1: P G Wodehouse on Monday: “It was one of those parties where you cough twice before you speak and then decide not to say it aft…
During those two years, an obscure and unassuming undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, completed his studies. Hoping to avoid the plague, he returned to the house of his birth, from which his mother managed a farm. His father had died shortly before he was born, and he had been brought up by his maternal grandmother. Perhaps inspired by rural peace and quiet, or lacking anything better to do with his time, the young man thought about science and mathematics. Later he wrote: 'In those days I was in the prime of my life for invention, and minded mathematics and [natural] philosophy more than at any other time since.' His researches led him to understand the importance of the inverse square law of gravity, an idea that had been hanging around ineffectually for at least 50 years. He worked out a practical method for solving problems in calculus, another concept that was in the air but had not been formulated in any generality. And he discovered that white sunlight is composed of many different colours — all the colours of the rainbow.
One of my colleagues saw me reading this, and commented that while he recognised Pythagoras a2 + b2 = c2, and also Einstein's E = mc2, the third equation on the front cover was unknown to him. It is:
∂2u
= c2
∂2u
∂t2
∂x2
I guess the wave equation isn't as visible in popular culture as the other two. Be that as it may, this is a breezy popular science book, by an author well known in Pratchett fandom, looking at a succession of well known scientific equations and the concepts and consequences that have flowed from each one. He finishes with the Black-Scholes equation regarding the price of financial derivatives:
½ σ2S2
∂2V
+ rS
∂V
+
∂V
– rV = 0
∂S2
∂S
∂t
However, it's not actually clear that Black-Scholes is correct, or that it is helpful (which may not be the same thing). A nice popularising book for the advanced reader; get it here.
This was my top unread book acquired in 2012; next on that list is Something Like Normal, by Trish Doller.
Sat, 12:27: RT @guyverhofstadt: For a family of four this registration process could cost £290. The European Parliament and I think it should be free.…
Sun, 10:45: RT @ClarkeAward: Past Clarke Award judge @nwbrux has a crack at using reader data to predict this year’s Clarke Award shortlist https://t.c…
I’ve been making occasional notes about the relationship between Doctor Who and Ireland, but this seems a good enough day to pull it all together.
TV Who
No part of televised Who is set in Ireland. However Tom Baker visited Derry and Belfast, in character as the Fourth Doctor, back in 1978:
There are a number of Irish characters in TV canon, all male as far as I know:
The Underwater Menace (1967): Sean, a shipwrecked Irish sailor, played in excruciating stereotype by P.G. Stephens.
The Wheel in Space (1967): Sean Flannigan, an Irish space engineer, played by James Mellor, who also appears in The Mutants (1972) but with an English accent.
Terror of the Autons (1971): McDermott, the former plastics factory manager killed by a plastic chair, played with an Ulster accent by Harry Towb, who also appears in The Seeds of Death (1969) but with an English accent.
The Sea Devils (1972): Clark, the survivor of the Sea Devils’ attack on the sea fort, played with an Ulster accent by Declan Mulholland, who also appears in The Androids of Tara (1978) with a very peculiar accent
If we are lucky, my compilation of the Norn Iron accents of Who may be visible here (probably not in the UK though).
Possibly also Irish (or at least possibly played with Irish accents): Rohm-Dutt in The Power of Kroll (1978-79), Chip in New Earth (2006), Thomas Kincade Brannigan in Gridlock (2007) and Luke Rattigan in The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky (2008).
NB that in the Torchwood episode Out of Time (2006), the Sky Gypsy flew to Cardiff from Dublin, but none of those on board seem to have been Irish.
In “The Feast of Steven” (the famous Christmas 1965 episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan), a policeman asks the Doctor if he is English, Scottish, Irish, or Welsh. He responds that he is “a citizen of the universe, and a gentleman to boot”.
There is occasional confusion about whether Gallifrey might be located in Ireland.
Books
No Doctor Who novel is set in Ireland as far as I know. I have found one short story in a published collection:
“Screamager”, by Jacqueline Rayner, in Short Trips: Monsters edited by Ian Farrington (2004). Features The Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria visiting Ireland in the 14th century and encountering a banshee. Here’s how it starts:
It was late summer, and yet Victoria was cold.
She was wearing layer upon layer of thick cloth, too many layers for comfort, but a chill radiated from the stone walls of the house despite the slivers of sun struggling through the thin slit windows.
She wanted to run away, run far out into the fields and bask in the sunlight, but the Doctor had told her to wait here, wait in the house with Cormac and Sorcha where she would be safe, and she would do as the Doctor had said.
She hoped the Doctor — and her friend Jamie — would return soon. She wasn’t entirely sure what they were ;doing, somewhere out there —something to do with robots, she thought — but surely the Doctor would soon solve the problem and defeat the menace so they could go back to the TARDIS. Oh, she liked Cormac, and Sorcha his wife, and Niall his brother, and she adored young Tadhg, eight-year-old son of the house —but as a pampered and fastidious Victorian she found it hard to bear the all-invasive stench of human waste, tainted in the evenings by the fatty smell of burning tallow — and worse still was the filthy bedding with its circuses of jumping insects, on which she was expected to sleep. But the Doctor had said that according to the lights of mid-fourteenth-century Ireland, this was perfectly acceptable, even luxurious, and by her own standards of courtesy, she could not complain — at least not within the hearing of her hosts.
I note also the following:
The first reference to Ireland in the Whoniverse was in Dalek World (1965), which includes a story, “The Five-Leaved Clover”, in which the Daleks are conned by an intergalactic Irish stereotype called Pat Kelly. You can read it here.
Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters by Malcolm Hulke (1974) gives Major Barker a back-story involving his army service in Northern Ireland. (In the original 1970 TV story, Doctor Who and the Silurians, there is no such reference and his name is Baker.)
Doctor Who and the Ambassadors of Death by Terrance Dicks (1987) gives Reagan a back-story involving IRA gun-running. (Likewise absent from the 1970 original TV story as broadcast, though reportedly it was in an earlier version of the script.)
Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark by Andrew Hunt (1992), one of the early New Adventures featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace, is a confused pot-pourri of Irish and Welsh mythology, including a parallel world called Tír na n-Óg.
The Scales of Injustice (1996), a Missing Adventure featuring the Third Doctor, Liz Shaw and UNIT, Business Unusual (1997), a BBC Past Doctor Adventure with the Sixth Doctor and Mel, and Instruments of Darkness (2001), another BBC Past Doctor Adventure with the Sixth Doctor, Mel and Evelyn, all include the sinister Irish Twins who have been infected with Auton technology. They are all by Gary Russell.
Camera Obscura by Lloyd Rose (2003), an Eighth Doctor Adventure with companions Fitz and Angie, features a time-sensitive Irish woman, Elizabeth Kelly.
The comic story “Death to the Doctor!” by Jonathan Morris, published in DWM #390 (2008) and The Widow’s Curse (2009), features an Irish enemy of the First Doctor called Questor.
“The Science of Magic” by Michael Rees in Short Trips: Indefinable Magic edited by Neil Corry (2009) has the Third Doctor and Liz Shaw fleeing to Ireland from a devastated Britain, but they only stay for less than a page’s worth of story.
In The Lost Skin (2017), a novella by Andy Frankham-Allen in the Candy Jar spinoff series of Lethbridge-Stewart books, it is revealed that the annoying journalist Harold Chorley (from the TV story The Web of Fear) is originally from Monaghan and is just putting on his posh English accent.
I’m not aware of any substantial references to Ireland in any of the New Who written fiction, though I am ready to be corrected.
Audios
Big Finish has done much better by the Emerald Isle than the BBC. The Eighth Doctor has an Irish companion, Molly O’Sullivan, a nurse from the First World War played by Ruth Bradley, who appeared in four series of Big Finish audios as the owner of the eponymous Dark Eyes. The third play of the first series, A Tangled Web (2012), takes Molly and the Doctor back to her childhood in Ireland in 1893. I don’t believe any of the rest share the Irish setting though. In The Night of the Doctor, Molly is the last of his companions named by the Eighth Doctor before he regenerates (at 5:36).
There are three other Big Finish audios set entirely in Ireland.
The Settling by Simon Guerrier (2006) is a pure historical story, bringing the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex to a well-imagined 1649 where Oliver Cromwell, played by Clive Mantle, is besieging first Drogheda and then Waterford.
The Book of Kells by Barnaby Edwards (2010) brings the Eighth Doctor and new-ish companion Tamsin (Niky Wardley) to the monastery of Kells in 1006, where the Abbot is played by Graeme Garden.
Iterations of I by John Dorney (2014) takes the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan to an island off the coast of Ireland to unravel a spooky mystery. I haven’t got to that one yet myself.
I note also the following:
The Rapture by Joe Lidster (2002, Seven/Ace): Catriona, an Irish clubber on Ibiza, played by Anne Bird.
The Sandman by Joe Lidster (2002, Six/Evelyn) and Bone of Contention (2004, Bernice Summerfield): Mordecan, a possibly Irish intergalactic wanderer player by Robin Bowerman.
Omega by Nev Fountain (2003) features an apparently Irish Time Lord, Professor Ertikus, played by Patrick Duggan.
Creatures of Beauty by Nicholas Briggs (2003, Five/Nyssa): Seedleson, a guard played by Michael Smiley.
Pest Control by Peter Anghelides (2008, Ten/Donna) features Miriam, an Irish centaur (!).
Louise Jameson struggles with a Belfast accent, and loses, in The Time Vampire (2010) by Nigel Fairs.
Sinead Keenan leads the guest cast in Iterations of I; she and her brother Rory Keenan have both appeared in a number of Big Finish productions, usually with Irish accents.
In fairness to the BBC, the 2001 radio play Regenerations by Daragh Carville, available on the Doctor Who at the BBC: The Plays album, is set at a Doctor Who convention in Belfast and stars Tom Baker and Sophie Aldred as themselves.
Further additions to this list will be gratefully noted.
The Arthur C. Clarke Award have released their full submission list, and as usual I have run it through the Goodreads and LibaryThing catalogues, checking the number of owners on each system and the average rating. The list below is raked by geometric average of the number of owners on the two systems. I have bolded the top quartile of each column (which for both ratings columns neatly matches those books which got on averge 4 or more points out of 5).
One other metric that has served me well in the past is to look at books with comparatively high ratios of LibraryThing owners (whose tastes seem more similar to the Clarke judges than Goodreads users). Of those in the top quartiles by ownership of both lists, The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville and Walkaway by Cory Doctorow are notably strong in that regard, even though their reader ratings are not as strong as some others.
![P%20G%20Stephens%20%20'Doctor%20Who'%20(1967)%204.5[1].jpg](https://i0.wp.com/fromtheheartofeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/1034198_100.jpg?w=584&ssl=1 "P%20G%20Stephens%20%20'Doctor%20Who'%20(1967)%204.5[1].jpg")
