Monthly Archives: August 2016

Giving it all away

Posted on August 30, 2016 by ActonBooks

On this day in 1852 there died a man who these days would have been given therapy for his condition. He was, in those unreconstructed times, called a miser. There is probably a pressure group somewhere railing as you read … Continue reading →

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Bull running in England? Why haven’t I heard of it?

Posted on August 25, 2016 by ActonBooks

Bull running in Lincolnshire? Why haven’t I heard of it? Thankfully because it was banned long, long ago. You probably don’t want to know what happened to each year’s Stamford bull on the feast of St Brice’s Day, but it … Continue reading →

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Beastliness and mischief – St Brice’s Day

Posted on August 21, 2016 by ActonBooks

Firstly St Brice — usual story; orphan boy picked up by a priest. Grown up bad, Brice, or Britius to call him by his given name, sealed his reputation as a man who had not yet seen the light of … Continue reading →

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Celestial Mechanics

Posted on August 18, 2016 by ActonBooks

There are bad and less bad racial epithets and stereotypes. Yank or Limey does not hurt, but in a world of generation snowflake, where people melt into a puddle of offence taken at the slightest insensitivity or viewpoint that isn’t theirs, it … Continue reading →

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Who killed Harry Larkyns?

Posted on August 15, 2016 by ActonBooks

  Nowadays the average twentysomething works their way through temporary though deep relationships before permanence happens in the shape of marriage (or something like it). For 19th century women it wasn’t so easy. So we can forgive, if that is … Continue reading →

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Elegant shopping at Derry and Toms

Posted on August 4, 2016 by ActonBooks

Great graphic commercial art from the 1920s in this piece from Dave Walker about the department store in Kensington, now long gone… Victoria Station, at a quiet time of the day. Sometime…in the 1920s, I think. A display unit, and … Continue reading →

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Chin music

Posted on August 3, 2016 by ActonBooks

Entertainment before a big game is never as star-spangled as that at halftime, but organisers know you must not let the crowd get restive waiting for the main event. It was ever thus, though the acts may have changed a … Continue reading →

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