Neutrally and factually recounted in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as it is below, you can't help wondering what the psyychological impact of this bizarre upbringing was.

So, then, musical performance is just a matter of playing the notes on the page. Yes? Well... errr... no... There is also that little matter of the personality of the performer, as here, with the wonderful Patricia Kopatchinskaya and Polina Leschenko: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G8n...

Further instalment of that never-ending source of delight, the names of American Football players. Wide Receiver for #Purdue: Nitro Tuggle

FT article on the joys of luxury $2m motorhomes: ‘From 2022 the couple spent 6 mths a yr in their motorhome, with Willis running his video company from the coach’s $250K AV suite. A year ago the couple went on the road full time, subsequently selling their home. (They have since separated.)’ Hmmm….

So this is what happens when you send a book proposal in! A little gem from JB Bury writing to his publisher Macmillan in 1896: ‘Of course Mrs Mulhall’s proposal is out of the question. My wife happens to have met the lady and was not favourably impressed by her brainpower.’

So then, grade inflation isn't just a contemporary phenomenon. That wonderful historian, Edward Thompson, at an exam board in 1950s Nottingham, as candidates who had failed were repeatedly passed: 'So then, how many papers does a candidate have to fail in order to pass the examination?'

Hmm... not quite sure what to make of this quote from Sir Robert Peel: 'I have never seen an Irishman that had not something Irish about him'.

Wild alpine Monkshood (Aconitum) walking above Lermoos, Austria.

Municipal lawn mower, Kirchplatz, Ehrwald, Austria. Mows all day. At night tethers itself to charger. Then next morning starts again. Not entirely sure, though, that this approach to public lawn mowing would work in inner city Nottingham...

At last! Edible History--Eat and work at the same time Ella Hawkins, 'One British Archive: Creating an Edible Archive', Journal of British Studies, 64 (2025)

Women's Attire in Irish Universities, Part 2 Alfred O'Rahilly, President of UCC, reputedly enforced the requirement that female students wear long stockings, by prowling through the Quadrangle feeling their knees through their long skirts.... Here he is writing to the UCC Women's Society:

Scholarly solipsism Ah isn't that nice. My brother David has sent me a copy of his latest book. And he has signed it with a note to my wife Johanna and me...

... except that he hasn't. He dedicated it to Johanna and... errr... to himself.

I think things may have changed a bit since then.... Studying History in UCD: 'until the mid-1960s women were not allowed to wear trousers; if they broke this rule, porters would escort them off the premises. In the library students rose in unison and recited the angelus at noon and 6 p.m.'

I see the Irish Minister for Transport got the name of the British Ambassador wrong 4 times in a thank you speech. Reminds me of my PVC friend who in a speech at the British Embassy in Brazil thanked the Amb and his wife Dido. Unfortunately his Freudian subconscious inserted an ‘L’ into Dido…

i've just realised the guðjohnsen lad who scored iceland's first goal against scotland is the son of the other guðjohnsen, who is the son of the other guðjohnsen what a family

I'll just post without comment the following letter - part of the ongoing discussion about the definition of a gentleman - from today's London Times 'My father, a dyed-in-the-wool Yorkshireman, once stated that a gentleman would always hold the door open for his wife when she brought in the coal.'

From Ruth Dudley Edwards FCO book During the UK/Iceland cod war the eccentric UK diplomat Sir Donald Maitland (known as 'the poison dwarf') went to see his considerably-taller Icelandic opposite number. He leapt on to his desk and said 'I have been told to make representations at the highest level'.

Nice to be told about new jobs, but not quite sure about the AI here: (a) I am retired (b) I am totally unqualified for any of these jobs (c) Can't imagine anyone having the set of skills for these jobs

The sad fate of (nearly) all historians, as summarised by Joel Rosenthal: We come and we go; we publish, we get remaindered, we get taken off the shelves, we get lost in the jumble of electronic texts, we get rearranged so we cannot find our own books... we get cited and then we no longer get cited.

So then, how can I be more be productive? Maybe the obit of Frederick Forsyth in The Times has a hint. Began writing 7.00am every morning 6 hours later he had 4000 words. Went for walk. Returned and corrected text. 55 days later: book finished. But then, of course, he was only writing fiction…

J B Bury, vg (and handsome) historian, in 1906 gave his famous Camb inaugural. So full of women that the Camb Review couldn't get in, which led it to complain: 'we cannot contemplate with equanimity the time when a shed for perambulators would form a necessary part of every lecture room.' Hmmm....

Another wonderful example of Anglican condescension from Mike Higton: William T. Manning, Bp of New York (1921-1946), was asked if there was salvation outside the Episcopal Church: “Perhaps so”, he replied after a long, puzzled pause, “but no gentleman would avail himself of it.”

Just been re-reading Mike Higton's wonderful The Life of Christian Doctine, where he mentions that spoof strapline for the Church of England: ‘Loving Jesus with a slight air of superiority since AD 597.’

Exciting headline award winner

If you ask someone today to name the builder of Hadrian's Wall, they would give you a funny look. But historical memory is odd, and right up to the 1800s we forgot who built it. Until in 1840 John Hodgson, an obscure Northumbrian clergyman, published the LONGEST footnote in history... 1/22

Rory McIlroy's Masters Victory Lovely comment by a reader in the New York Times, who had just sat glued to his seat for five hours watching the twists and turns: 'I have just had a message from my Fitbit congratulating me for being in the vigorous exercise zone.'

Mysteries of the English language, no 809

!?! 'Lincolnshire, the Fenlands and East Anglia... played an important role in the evolution of the imagery of the grotesque.' (Michelle Brown, The World of the Luttrell Psalter, 79)

In the great tradition of being rude to percussionists, the Guardian recently described someone in their obit as 'musician and drummer'. And today it has a lovely brief letter recounting an audience reply at a gig to the question 'Does anyone have any requests?' 'Yes, play one the drummer knows.'

As St Patrick's Day comes around on Monday, can we summarise how much and how little we know about him? Have a look at what I have just put up on academia.edu www.academia.edu/128216139/St...

Did you know that Margaret Thatcher had Invincible knickers? Lovely obit of Captain Tony Hallett in today's Times.

Interesting question...

And here is the proof that He did...

'Fat sparrow' Netsuke Japan, Edo period

Hmmm... Ireland has changed a bit in the past hundred years-- try this: lxoa.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/i...

Early 20c Spanish journalist Julio Camba on alcohol and national character. “English people appeared to become a little more human as long as they were drinking. They spoke with great animation and their movements appeared almost spontaneous. Some of them even roared with laughter, like people do.”

I see an Irishman has opened a new restaurant near King's Cross in London. Called An Bonnán Buí. It doesn't sell alcohol. Presumably he is aware of the delightful irony. irisharoundtheworld.com/an-bonnan-bu...

Just used my copy of Franklin Williams, Index of Dedications to English books pre 1641. AMAZING work of scholarship. How did he do it? Simple: by looking at ALL published books. Started in 1936, finished 1960. 138 libraries, USA, Ire, Scot, Fr, Eng.. AND he had a sense of humour.

Who needs Ozempic or Wegovy, when you can have this?

Ah fame! We live on through our books of course. Err.... don't we....?? A clergyman, about to vote in a TCD election, was worried that the candidate, W. E. H. Lecky, was an atheist, asked a friend whether he was a believer, concluding with the immortal question, ‘Has he ever written any books?’

Bloom County by Berke Breathed It was funny back in the 1980s We aren't laughing now...

Advice to young composers from Thea Musgrave, the 96-year-old Scottish composer: ‘Don’t. Unless you really have to; then you’ll do it anyway.’

Quentin Skinner on JGA Pocock he hated 'the application of industrial technologies to scholarship': ie the typewriter! he hated 'the electronic forest in which we are now compelled to wander' he never learned to use a computer, and wrote all his books by hand Different era, now passed for ever.

Discovered (disaster!) Bennett & Kerr, vg academic bookshop with this delightful description of the owners 'Edmund Bennett and Andrew Kerr for a few years shared the classical education that would (they were promised) teach them 'to despise the emoluments which it forbids them from attaining'.

Huge news for Belfast, where every second building is a Caffé Nero.

I kid you not. It's the Rosy-Faced Lovebird!

How did he get away with it? From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, my brief bio of that paradoxical puritan and serial sexual predator, Stephen Jerome.

But hey, what about this? The Round quote was from 1888. This one is from...err... 2018, from the first volume of the Cambridge History of Ireland, p. 205: 'The conquerors... who arrived in 1169... found themselves travellers to an Iron Age...'

Irish historians will be very familiar with English condescension to 'uncivilised' Ireland. Take this quotation from J. H. Round