1000 Years Of Annoying The French
Before 1066, the issue troubling the inhabitants of what is now Britain was not ‘Will I get a decent pension?’ or ‘How much is my house worth?’ It was more along the lines of ‘When will a horde of axe-wielding murderers come charging across the horizon to rape the...
A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush
Even the most casual remarks let drop by this remarkable people had the impact of a sledgehammer. Tū tōtt baglo piltiā. ‘Thy father fell into the river.’ I non angur ai; tū tā duts angur ai. ‘I have nine fingers; you have ten.’ Ōr manchī aiyo; buri aīsh kutt. ‘A dwarf has come to ask for food.’ And Iā chitt bitto tū jārlom, ‘I have an intention to kill you’, to which the reply came pat, Tū bilugh lē bidiwā manchī assish, ‘You are a very kind-hearted man.’
A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush
On the way back from ‘luncheon’, while Hyde-Clarke bought some Scotch ribs in a fashionable butcher’s shop, I went into the Post Office in Mount Street and sent a cable to Hugh Carless, a friend of mine at the British Embassy, Rio de Janeiro.
The Surgeon Of Crowthorne
Lambeth belonged administratively, at least until 1888, to the county of Surrey – meaning that the relatively strict laws that applied to the capital’s citizens did not apply to anyone who ventured, via one of the new bridges like Waterloo, Blackfriars, Westminster or Hungerford, into the wen of Lambeth. The village thus became fast known as a site of revelry and abandon, a place where public houses and brothels and lewd theatres abounded, and where a man could find entertainment of all kinds – and disease of all varieties – for no more than a handful of pennies.
