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Parade’s End pop quiz

Note: see the update for partial clarification The name of Christopher Tietjens’ son in Parade’s End isa) Tommieb) Michaelc) Mark juniord) All of the above The correct answer is D, all of the above. Or at least I think it is. Through Part One, Chapter Four of The Last Post I have seen all three […]

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Contested Will discussion

Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, $26.00 ISBN: 1416541624I enjoyed James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599 and wanted to read his latest book on Shakespeare as soon as I could. I didn’t realize Wikipedia had a long article on the Shakespeare authorship question as […]

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A Man Could Stand Up discussion

Picture source Months and months before Christopher Tietjens had stood extremely wishing that his head were level with a particular splash of purposeless whitewash. Something behind his mind forced him to the conviction that, if his head–and of course the rest of his trunk and lower limbs–were suspended by a process of levitation to that […]

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The Gambler discussion

Interior of the Gambling House at Wiesbaden Published in Harpers Weekly, October 7, 1871The text (translated by C. J. Hogarth) can be found at Project Gutenberg. The Wikipedia page for the book gives more details than what I provide below. The story behind Dostoevsky writing The Gambler has almost overshadowed the novella itself, which is […]

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You’re showing your age

Bird Life in Wington: Practical Parables for Young People by John Calvin Reid, illustrated by Reynold H. WeidenaarFrom the preface: In seeking to stimulate the interest of children and young people in the worship services of the church, through the years I have used a number of ideas for Sermonettes. Just one has succeeded beyond […]

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The Dreadnought hoax

Virginia Stephen (Woolf) in disguise on the far left, William Horace de Vere Cole in tophat on the far rightSomething a little lighter for today… On February 7, 1910, the HMS Dreadnought hosted a hastily arranged tour of four Abyssinian princes, or so they had been told. It turns out to have been an elaborate […]