27 August 1946: birth of Peter Craze, brother of Michael ‘Ben Jackson’ Craze, who played Dako in The Space Museum (1965), Du Pont in The War Games (1969), and Costa in Nightmare of Eden (1979).
27 August 1991: radio broadcast of episode 1 of The Paradise of Death, starring Jon Pertwee, Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney as the Third Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith and the Brigadier. Sarah and her dimwitted assistant Jeremy Fitzoliver investigate the new Space World tourist attraction on Hampstead Heath; The Doctor and Brigadier are looking into it as well, and the Doctor apparently falls to his doom from a very high tower…
27 August 1883: eruption of Krakatoa: the Third Doctor says he witnessed it in Inferno (1970), there is evidence in Rose (2005) that the Ninth Doctor was there too, the Tenth Doctor and Rose narrowly escape the explosion in the Doctor Who Adventures story Under the Volcano (2006) and the eruption releases the alien Xylok which becomes Sarah Jane’s computer, Mr Smith, as we discover in The Lost Boy (SJA 2007). August is a good month for volcanic eruptions (cf Pompeii on the 24th).
Overall, my feeling is that the Niccolo series somewhat tails off, particularly the last couple of books, in contrast to the Lymond cycle which really hits its stride in the four closely-linked final books (the first two being much more standalones). But the first four Niccolos in particular are very fine.
There is indeed a lot of ambiguity in the handing of sex – both the underage stuff you mention and also the homosexuality – but then Dunnett excels in ambiguity in interpersonal relationships.
She’s still one of the biggest influences on my writing – I would love to do a fantasy version of a DUnnett series…