• Northern part of Cyprus decriminalises homosexuality
  
  Step by step!
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality cyprus )
• How did we get the teaching of Irish so wrong?
  
  Good question, not really answered.
  (tags: languages ireland )
• All Thi”Quoth” the raven? The heartwarming tale of a defective verb
  
  *Not* related to “quote”.
  (tags: linguistics )
• Ken Clarke attacks myth of ‘heroic British ministers’ fighting EU red tape | Politics | The Guardian
  
  Or does he?
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• Scholars Discover New Poems from Ancient Greek Poetess Sappho
  
  Hooray!
  (tags: poetry )

A nice little book of scientific trivia for the younger reader, similar to the slightly less genteel Why Is Snot Green? / How Loud Can You Burp? books. No big surprises, though it’s interesting to note that nobody has yet discovered why yawns are so contagious.

• The Straight Dope: Is the lost city of Atlantis at the bottom of a lake in North Dakota?
  
  Er, no.
  (tags: funny ancientmysteries )

This was the 50th Anniversary release in Big Finish’s Companion Chronicles series – a story told by Carole Ann Ford as Susan, explaining the very first adventure that she and the Doctor had after leaving Gallifrey and landing on Earth. Terry Molloy, who was Davros to the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors on TV, plays a disconsolate Gallifreyan technician called Quadrigger Stoyn who was accidentally brought along for the ride – apparently he will be a recurring character. I liked this though I won’t rave about it; the first quarter of an hour, describing the first stages of their departure from Gallifrey, is excellent, carried solo by Ford who clearly loves it. The subsequent story of how Susan and her grandfather deal with Stoyn and the first of many alien threats to humanity is OK, but perhaps not quite right for this format.

A collection of essays published as a Festschrift for Aidan Clarke, mainly concentrating on the first half of the 17th century though with a couple delving back into the Elizabethan period which interests me more. Which is not to say that the 17th century was dull – far from it. There are lots of fascinating bits of research here – quite a lot on the ideology of the English in Ireland (both Old English and New English, and later the Confederates) which of course ties into the religious and cultural questions as well; two chapters that really made my jaw drop pointing out the similarities between the Stuart and Spanish monarchies of the period, including the eerily parallel justifications for forcibly transplanting population; and a few local studies of specific individuals and places.

The two chapters I enjoyed most (in that they tickled my other interests) were by Jane Ohlmeyer and Bríd McGrath on the early 17th-century Irish parliaments, covering the House of Lords and the House of Commons respectively, the latter intriguingly hinting at hidden archives of early election data. A table sets out the timescale of the steps between London commissioning the summoning of an Irish Parliament and the actual meeting; McGrath notes succinctly that “Due to a procedural error, the 1628 parliament never actually met.” The parliament did not meet until 1634. You want to watch out for those procedural errors, folks; they can have serious consequences.

• Bulgaria introduces “preferential voting”
  
  This seems to mean “open lists”.
  (tags: bulgaria elections )
• Brussels’ 007 dimension
  
  Kristof Clerix reports (thanks, @edwardlucas).
  (tags: belgium spying )
• 13 reasons why I am taking the Daily Mail to the Press Complaints Commission
  
  Listing the lies.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• The 11 Levels of Irish Rain
  
  Favourite childhood memory: being inside with the rain *outside*.
  (tags: ireland )

I think the only other Rendell I’ve read is Thirteen Steps Down, which has a similar setting in the socially fragmented London of the Noughties; The Saint Zita Society features at its core those who work for the rich in one particular exclusive street, mostly immigrants from various parts of Europe and the Commonwealth. A rich white man kills his wife’s black lover, perhaps accidentally, and though only the au pair knows about it, the secret tears apart the social microcosm of the street’s inhabitants (again, it’s a crime novel rather than a mystery novel – we can see that first death coming from miles away, and the interest is in seeing how everyone copes, or fails to). There is a gratuitous psychopath, who I found a bit of a distraction in plot terms, but otherwise it is well done and well observed.

An audio that will really appeal to those who are already fans of the Big Finish storyline with Hex, which appeared to have come to an end back in 2012. The first episode is practically a two-hander between Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, which for me is one of the best examinations of both the Doctor as manipulator and Ace’s natural resentment of that; then we move into what appears at first to be an alternate timeline where Hex’s life worked out very differently, with the true state of affairs only gradually becoming apparent. Amy Pemberton, who played Sally Morgan in several previous Seventh Doctor plays, also joins the crowd. It’s an excellent twist to the end of Hex’s story, and might even be lucid enough for fans who aren’t already familiar with it to enjoy.

• The Brittle Grip, Part 2
  
  Josh Marshall on the wealthy.
  (tags: uspolitics )

Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
  Thou need na start awa sae hasty
    Wi bickering brattle!
  I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,
    Wi' murdering pattle.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion
Has broken Nature's social union,
  An' justifies that ill opinion
    Which makes thee startle
  At me, thy poor, earth born companion
    An' fellow mortal!

I doubt na, whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
  A daimen icker in a thrave
     'S a sma' request;
  I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,
    An' never miss't.

Thy wee-bit housie, too, in ruin!
It's silly wa's the win's are strewin!
  An' naething, now, to big a new ane,
    O' foggage green!
  An' bleak December's win's ensuin,
    Baith snell an' keen!

Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste,
An' weary winter comin fast,
  An' cozie here, beneath the blast,
    Thou thought to dwell,
  Till crash! the cruel coulter past
    Out thro' thy cell.

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble,
Has cost thee monie a weary nibble!
  Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble,
    But house or hald,
  To thole the winter's sleety dribble,
    An' cranreuch cauld.

But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
  The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
    Gang aft agley,
  An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
    For promis'd joy!

Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
  But och! I backward cast my e'e,
    On prospects drear!
  An' forward, tho' I canna see,
    I guess an' fear!

Crumbs. I’ve been trying to read a bit more of the great modernist writers, but I found this really too opaque for my commuting brain; I got that there was a murder and long-lost siblings and racism and slavery and all that, and some interesting characterisation, but it was all a bit dense and none of the characters really all that attractive. Maybe if I’d been reading it on holiday, or while bedridden with some trivial, relatively pain-free, but immobilising complaint, I might have enjoyed it more.

Occasionally my reading and/or listening schedule generates an interesting pairing, and this is the first such this year: Paul Cornell's 1996 novel featuring the wedding of Bernice Summerfield, and Big Finish's 2012 play (a charity performance for ME research, with no less than twelve credited co-authors) featuring a look back at her subsequent audio history. It's quite impressive that there has been a steady stream of Benny material over the sixteen years between the two, or indeed over the 21+ years since she first appeared on the scene. I think it's fair to say that of the non-TV Who companions, she has had the longest and most vigorous life.

Neither of these is remotely comprehensible without knowing much about the back-stories concerned – with Happy Endings, it's the previous 40 New Adventures featuring Benny and her travels in the Seventh Doctor's Tardis with Ace, Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester; with Many Happy Returns, it's an even larger number of audios and books featuring her involvement with the historical collection of the urbanely sinister Time Lord, Irving Braxiatel. It's a bit invidious to compare the two, as they are works for different purposes in different media written in different centuries. But I will do so anyway.

Happy Endings was the 50th New Adventure overall, and the 41st with Benny. It's a rave-up celebration of the series so far: Bernice is marrying Jason in the village of Cheldon Bonniface, and many characters from previous Who stories, particularly the New Adventures, turn up either as guests or as potential spoilers. Paul Cornell is always great when expressing his love for Who (or indeed other things that he loves) and this is awfully good fun, particularly for the further characterisation of Benny as uncertain bride.

It was interesting to read it so soon after Last of the Gaderene, which takes itself much more seriously, and is about the same length, but seems to have only about half the plot. I cheered at various points, though I confess I also scratched my head at others as characters who I barely remembered from their single appearance in a novel I read three years ago emerged blinking back into the narrative light. But the cheers were more numerous than the head-scratchings, and really, what more can you want?

Many Happy Returns is the work of many hands, and gets off to a very tricky start with a misfiring postmodern sketch – but after that it livens up considerably, and although Big Finish have done the theme of telling a story through a key character exploring a dodgy museum dedicated to his or her life life a couple of times now, this really takes off through the performance of Lisa Bowerman and the rest of the company; perhaps the change of pace to what is essentially a sequence of five-to-ten-minute sketches was stimulating to the creative juices all round.

Anyway, I could not really recommend either of these to anyone who was not already a fan of that particular branch of Bernice Summerfield continuity; but for those who are, they are indispensable.

• The Myth of the Shrinking EU Press Corps
  
  @garethharding looks at the real data.
  (tags: eu )
• What if the annoyances of conference calls happened in real-life meetings.
  
  Ow ow ow!!!
  (tags: video funny )
• A Beautiful Bouquet: the Pamirs
  
  Peter reports.
  (tags: Tajikistan )
• Facebook Hilariously Debunks Princeton Study Saying It Will Lose 80% Of Users
  
  Lies, damned lies, and statistics!
  (tags: facebook science )
• How the U.S. Maps the World’s Most Disputed Territories
  
  “The democratisation of cartography has opened up the world of geographical knowledge.”
  (tags: maps )
• 10 Fun Facts About the Rock Hyrax
  
  “Like elephants, manatees and dugongs, male hyraxes lack a scrotum.”
  (tags: biology )
• Why is coffee in France so bad?
  
  Yes, I’ve always been puzzled by this.
  (tags: france )

• Sea is for Cookie
  
  It’s good enough for me.
  (tags: art )
• The Definitive Ranking Of London Tube Lines
  
  There is some room for reasonable disagreement, but not about the DLR.
  (tags: london travel )
• Report: Most Americans Can’t Even Name Their State’s Shadow Lord
  
  Ah, The Onion!
  (tags: funny )

This is part of my reading of past winners of the Tiptree (and Clarke and BSFA) Award; I must say I had not heard of either book other than in this context; I was pleasantly surprised.

Walk to the End of the World, the first half (I got the combined edition, The Slave and the Free) is a horribly well-drawn future dystopia where women are enslaved and brainwashed, and doped up men fight for their own continued supremacy. It's gruesomely well depicted, though not at all subtle and a bit relentless.

But Motherlines takes a lot of Walk to the End of the World and inverts it – we switch from a male to a female central character, and discover that a lot of what had been presented as unchallengeable fact in the first volume is in fact very different looked at from the other side of the gender divide. In addition, the actual plot has some very impressive twists and turns in what is still a very short book.

Motherlines is really excellent, and though Walk to the End of the World is not quite as good you enjoy the second much more for having read the first. And neither is very long.

Hooray! The first of the sf award shortlists of this year are out, the pleasingly eclectic Kitschies, which celebrate “progressive, intelligent and entertaining books that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic”. This also means I can do my first number-crunching of the year by looking up how many people list the shortlisted works on the two major library sites, Goodreads and LibraryThing, and what average rating the books have been given. (I’ll note that while Goodreads has extended its lead over LibraryThing in terms of numbers of users, my sense is that both sites continue to expand.)

The Kitschies come in three categories. First the Red Tentacle, equivalent of Best Novel:

A Tale for the Time Being has clearly caught the public mood, with more copies owned by both GR and LT users than the other five nominees put together. But I am intrigued by the high user ratings given to Red Doc> – and by the comparatively low ratings for Bleeding Edge.

Then we have the Golden Tentacle, awarded for best debut novel – must be the writer’s first novel in any genre.

The intriguingly titled Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is far ahead of all of the other books in either category combined, in terms of popularity. On the other hand Stray almost falls off the LT charts; neither LT user who has logged it has yet rated it. In the mid-section, Ancillary Justice‘s numbers look good.

The third category, the Inky Tentacle for cover art, is not really susceptible to the same sort of analysis. (I must say that, of the shortlisted works, I do like the cover of Stray.)

As I said in my roundup post from last year’s awards, this is a good way of identifying books that have built up a wide audience, but may not actually prove a reliable predictor of the winners.

• What Grantland Got Wrong
  
  A closer examination of Grantland’s mistakes on trans issues.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )
• The Dr. V Story: A Letter From the Editor
  
  Grantland apologises for its appalling treatment of a trans inventor, who then committed suicide.
  (tags: sexandgenderandsexuality )
• The Frenzy
  
  Why the hysteria over a non-existent swarm of migrants?
  (tags: ukpolitics eu migration li )
• London in 1927 & 2013
  
  That colour film from 1927 – updated!
  (tags: films history )
• In flight: see the planes in the sky right now
  
  Brilliant documentary by the Guardian.
  (tags: travel history )
• Gender Performance in Earth Girls Are Easy
  
  More going on here than I had realised.
  (tags: sf sexandgenderandsexuality )
• 40 more maps that explain the world
  
  Brilliant.
  (tags: maps )

Current
British Interventions in Early Modern Ireland, eds Ciaran Brady and Jane Ohlmeyer
Do Elephants Ever Forget?, by Guy Campbell
With The Light vol 6, by Keiko Tobe
[Doctor Who] Grimm Reality by Simon Bucher-Jones and Kelly Hale
The Big Finish Companion v1, by Richard Dinnick

Last books finished
Absalom, Absalom!, by William Faulkner
The Saint Zita Society, by Ruth Rendell

Last week’s audios
Ghost in the Machine (Jo/3) by Jonathan Morris
Many Happy Returns (Benny/various) by various
Afterlife (7/Ace/Hex) by Matt Fitton
Current: The Beginning (Susan/1) by Marc Platt

Next books
Rivers of London, by Ben Aaronovitch
The Rabbi’s Cat v2, by Joann Sfarr
Jane Austen, by Claire Tomalin
[Doctor Who] Pest Control, by Peter Anghelides

Books acquired in last week
A Scanner Darkly, by Philip K. Dick
The Lowest Heaven, eds Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin
The Unlimited Dream Company by J. G. Ballard
The Uncertain Legacy of Crisis: European Foreign Policy Faces the Future, by Richard Youngs
Challenges for European Foreign Policy in 2014: The EU’s Extended Neighbourhood, eds Giovanni Grevi and Daniel Keohane
Empowering Europe’s Future: Governance, Power and Options for the EU in a Changing World, by Giovanni Grevi, Daniel Keohane, Bernice Lee and Patricia Lewis

• What Makes Jo Walton So Great
  
  Hear, hear!
  (tags: sf )

• Tom Baker interviews released on his 80th birthday
  
  “I’m Doctor Who again, you know, so my happiness is restored!”
  (tags: doctor who doctor who: 04 )
• Agreement reached between Olli Rehn and Guy Verhofstadt
  
  European Liberals sort out their candidates.(For good or ill.)
  (tags: eu libdems )
• The best Europe we’ve ever had
  
  Brilliant piece on UK referendum by Robert Cooper.
  (tags: eu ukpolitics )
• Beijing NOT watching sunrises on giant TVs due to pollution
  
  Debunked! Another Daily Mail lie. (Thanks, @bellinghman)
  (tags: climatechange )
• The Frenzy
  
  Why the hysteria over a non-existent swarm of migrants?
  (tags: ukpolitics eu migration )

Continuing my intention of blogging Big Finish audios as I listen to them: this is a story with Katy Manning doing Jo Grant, investigating a dangerous entity which exists only as sounds. This is a classic audio story set-up and if anything it’s a bit surprising that it hasn’t been done to death – I can think of only the early (and fairly successful) Big Finish audio Whispers of Terror, and the Tenth Doctor’s excellent final outing Dead Air. Anyway, although I started a little irritated with the initial as-you-can-see-now audio scene setting, once Jo and the Doctor get into the confrontation with the audio creature, helped by the final survivor of the base whose end they are investigating (excellent performance from Damian Lynch), I found myself liking it a lot, particularly the portrayals of different characters from the two cast members; Manning is always at her most effective when pushed to do several things at once.

• Rennard: new Webster statement
  
  Apology surely not contentious!
  (tags: libdems rennard )
• Smog-hit Beijing shows sunsets on a giant TV to remind people what the sun looks like
  
  *gasp*
  (tags: climatechange )
• Asian American Groups Rejoice Ruling Striking Down PA’s Discriminatory Voter ID Law
  
  Thanks in part to my friend Louis O’Neill.
  (tags: uspolitics elections humanrights )
• The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness
  
  Overturning received wisdom with clear analysis!
  (tags: psychology mathematics )

I am reaching the end of the Pertwee era, with only one more Jo Grant novel to go. This is a satisfying return to well-known themes of the Third Doctor’s era – the country village, the Master, the sinister scientific installation, the aliens taking over people’s bodies – updated for the audience of the year 2000, with the government being rather more obviously malicious rather than incompetent. Gatiss’s last Who novel (so far) as it turns out, after three earlier ones.

A heartfelt novel about early convict settlers in New South Wales, which combines the intense personal drama of eking out a precarious existence on marginal cultivatable land with the brutality of the English settlers’ conflict with the indigenous Australians.  Apparently rooted fairly strongly in fact, though I don’t think that affects my judgement of it as a novel one way or the other.  Certainly made me realise how little I actually know about Australia.

• Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who art from 1976
  
  Found by @Matthew_Kilburn in his archives.
  (tags: doctor who )
• Internal investigation into allegations against Lord Rennard
  
  “the evidence suggests that Lord Rennard’s behaviour has caused distress to a number of women” “an apology would be appropriate, as would a commitment to change his behaviour in future.”
  (tags: libdems rennard )
• Q&A on the allegations against Lord Rennard. (My conclusion: it’s a mess.)
  
  Stephen Tall reflects.
  (tags: libdems rennard )
• Lord Rennard – no apology, no whip
  
  Proud of my friends who have signed this.
  (tags: libdems rennard )
• Pushing Fannish Buttons: Chi Fi vs The Westin River North Hotel of Chicago
  
  Hmmm….
  (tags: sf )

I have been thinking about the literary anniversaries of 2014; in previous years I’ve done a poll asking what others have read, but this year I decided to add a little more. (If there’s enough interest, I might do a poll as well.)

1764
Just one here, The Castle of Otranto by Robert Walpole1814
Again just one but it’s a biggie: Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen.  Other books published this year which I haven’t read but which do register on the radar screen: Waverley, by Walter Scott; Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte, by Adelbert von Chamisso (wrongly listed as an 1813 publication by me last yearThe Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties, by Frances Burney.

1914
Goodreads has a list of 199 books from 1914 popular among its users, which isn’t entirely accurate (several James Joyce short stories are listed separately; Hesse’s Demian was not published until 1919) but a good starting point.  You may want to cross-reference with Wikipedia here and here.

I don’t appear to have read a single novel from 1914.  I have read three short story collections, and love them all – Dubliners by James Joyce,  The Wisdom of Father Brown, by G.K. Chesterton, and Beasts and Super-Beasts by Saki (online here).  As for non-fiction, this was the year that the authoritative but badly timed Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars was published by by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The top novel on Goodreads from 1914 is Kokoro, by Sōseki Natsume.  There’s also a lot of Edgar Rice Burroughs, including the first book publication of Tarzan of the Apes, and the first Pellucidar story, At the Earth’s Core.  The only other ones I’d really heard of are The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, by Robert Tressell, The Flying Inn, by G.K. Chesterton, and The World Set Free, by H.G. Wells. The bestselling novel of the year in the USA was the forgotten The Eyes of the World by Harold Bell Wright; second place was taken by Eleanor H. Porter’s Pollyanna, published in 1913.

1964
I’ve read a lot more of the books on the Goodreads list of 199 books from 1964. (Some of these are ringers, unfortunately; Asterix and the Big Fight is from 1967, for instance, and none of Vance’s Dying Earth books dates from 1964.) Those that I have read, or that we have on the shelves, are:

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl – my memory was that this was from a decade later, but clearly my memory was wrong.
• The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander – enjoyed when I was 13, wonder how well it would stand up now?
• Games People Play, by Eric Berne – read it as a teenager, when it was largely wasted on me.
• A Caribbean Mystery, by Agatha Christie – I remember good description of the scenery, but a rather cut-and-paste plot.
• Farnham’s Freehold, by Robert A. Heinlein – moving swiftly on…
• Flat Stanley, by Jeff Brown – one I haven’t actually read but that is on the shelves.
• A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe – a tough read for me, but very much worth it.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, by Ian Fleming – gorgeously illustrated book which was of course the basis for the film, published just after the author’s death.
• Martian Time-Slip, by Philip K. Dick – years since I’ve read it, but I remember it as especially surreal and downbeat.
• Asterix the Gladiator, by René Goscinny – fond memories of this one, where Goscinny and Uderzo were starting to hit their stride.
• Tree and Leaf, by J.R.R. Tolkien – this is the first edition, which includes only “On Fairy Stories” and “Leaf By Niggle”.
• The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot, by Robert Arthur – surely one of the best Three Investigators stories, on the trail of a stolen painting located by interrogating a series of parrots.
• Black Hearts in Battersea by Joan Aiken – hasn’t lingered in my mind as much as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, but this is the one where Simon’s art studies are interrupted by a plot to overthrow King James III.
• The Wanderer, by Fritz Leiber – an early Hugo winner, which I quite liked.
• The Pushcart War, by Jean Merrill – I remember this vaguely; hadn’t realised it was set in the future (1976).
• Friday the Rabbi Slept Late, by Harry Kemelman – the only one of this series I have read, but I remember it having a well-depicted protagonist and a particularly ingenious resolution.
• Galahad at Blandings by P.G. Wodehouse – they all blend into one, but I recall this one as particularly good, bringing the two brothers together.
• Soldier, Ask Not (original novella), by Gordon R. Dickson – I know I’ve read it, can’t recall anything at all about it.
• The Dalkey Archive, by Flann O’Brien – the last book published in his lifetime, pulling together elements from The Third Policeman, with added guest appearances from James Joyce and St Augustine, into a mostly successful contemporary comedy.
• Greybeard, by Brian W. Aldiss – I don’t remember much about this except that it was pretty gloomy.
• The Whitsun Weddings, by Philip Larkin – the other 1964 book on the shelves which I have yet to read.
• Doctor Who And The Daleks, by David Whitaker – the first, and absolutely my favourite, of the Doctor Who novelisations.
• An Enemy at Green Knowe, by L.M. Boston – this is the one where Tolly and Ping join forces against an evil occult professor.

• Connoisseur’s SF, by Tom Boardman – a rather good anthology from Penguin.
• Uncle, by J.P.Martin, the first in the series about the philanthropic elephant, which I suspect would not hold up well to rereading.
• Astrology, by Louis MacNeice – non-fiction study written by the poet while he was dying; his heart wasn’t in it.
• The Year of the Angry Rabbit, by Russell Braddon – sorry not to see this one better known; to quote Wikipedia, “giant mutant rabbits run amok in Australia while the Prime Minister uses a new superweapon to dominate the planet” – what’s not to love?  The basis for the film Night of the Lepus, which suffers from the fact that it is very difficult to make giant rabbits look at all threatening.

The top book from 1964 that I haven’t read is The Giving Tree, by Shel Silverstein, a popular American kids’ book, though I must say it looks a bit unappealing to me. The bestselling novel of the year in the USA was The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, published in 1963.  Wikipedia has various lists, somewhat inconsistent with each other, here, here, here and here.

I did think of going through books from 1989 as well here, but it’s strange to realise that Guards! Guards!, Pyramids and the second volume of Sandman are all a quarter-century old. And anyway, this is enough.

It's over a year since I last wrote up any Big Finish audios, but I have been listening to them faithfully all the way through. In retrospect, I crashed and burned with keeping a contemporary at about the time that a) I started the complete New Who rewatch (which I also didn't fully record) and b) Loncon 3 started to eat into my thinking time. Anyway, it's a new year, and I may not catch up immediately with the backlog, but I can at least start logging the audios I listen to in 2014.

The Jago and Litefoot series are tremendously successful. The two central characters featured in only one Old Who story, The Talons of Weng Chiang, which brought Tom Baker and Louise Jameson to Victorian London as the Fourth Doctor and Leela; Jago, a theatre manager, and Litefoot, a pathologist, got swept into the plot (which these days we recognise as racist despite its great moments). Apparently Robert Holmes, the then script editor of Doctor Who, was sufficiently taken with the performances of Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter that he considered a spinoff series in which they would have become a sort of Victorian X-Files, but he never got around to it.

Back in 2009, Big Finish did, as they thought, a one-off audio featuring Benjamin and Baxter in the characters of Jago and Lightfoot, The Mahogany Murderersloved it when it first came out, and so did many other fans, enough to justify BF making Series 1, Series 2, Series 3, Series 4, and another series and two specials which I failed to write up at the time.