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Iwas dreaming a fine bogey tale.

Robert Louis Stevenson had spent the night in his sickbed enveloped by a nightmare that had descended like a swift-forming fog, swirling together memories and discarded thoughts. Illness plagued Stevenson his whole life, and hed suffered especially after he and his wife, Fanny, moved to Dorset on the English seaside in 1884. He had spent the previous evening trying to recover from a respiratory infection, but a fever kept restful sleep from him, and Fanny eventually roused him after he cried out several times.

To Fannys surprise, he rebuked her for waking him. Hed wanted to stay within that shrouded mix of thoughts, where an idea had started to forma fine tale of a bogeyman and his mirrored opposite, a gentleman. Stevenson, then in his mid-30s and already a famous author after Treasure Island was published in 1881, rose and went down to eat with his family. There, he was obviously in a very pre-occupied frame of mind, his stepson Lloyd Osbourne observed, hurrying through his meal[an] unheard-of thing for him to doand on leaving said he was working with extraordinary success on a new story. The writer left very clear instructions: He was not to be disturbed, even if the house caught fire.

At first glance, Brodie resembled any other well-to-do man in 18th century Edinburgh. But there was a darker side to his nature. He gambled, partiedand kept at least two mistresses.

For three days, Stevenson wrote constantly, filing page after page from bed. Later in life, Fanny would reflect on this moment in their lives, thinking back on what inspired Stevensons marathon effort, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She recalled that her husband had recently read an article in a French scientific journal about the subconscious, about the minds inner workings and buried desires. Yet that was not the only thing on Stevensons mind when the dream came to him. There was something else, too, and Fannie knew it: his memories of Deacon Brodie.

At first glance, Brodie wouldve resembled any other well-to-do young man in 18th-century Edinburgh. He was a successful artisan, known particularly for his cabinetry skills. (As a child, Stevenson, also an Edinburgh native, had a Brodie-made bookcase and chest of drawers in his room.) Brodie belonged to the city council and served as its Deacon of the Incorporation of Wrightshence his epithet, Deacon. Hed been born William Brodie in 1741, the son of an already successful builder. When his father died, he inherited a 10,000 fortune, a princely amount (worth about $2.1 million today) at a time when the average Brit might earn a few pounds a year.

Brodie made as much as 600 annually, pushing him well into the ranks of Edinburghs wealthiest. Those fortunate circumstances put a particular air in [the] walk of the slender, youthful-looking man, as one of chronicler of Brodies life later noted, allowing him to dress in fine suits, often ensembles of all white.

But there was a dark side to Brodies nature. He loved to gamble, regularly losing large sums on cockfighting matches. (He kept several cocks himself in a pen at home, a large, high-ceiling manse that featured a mural depicting a Bible scene, the Adoration of the Magi.) Brodie partied and drankin places high and low, a member of Edinburghs tony Cape Club and a frequent patron of one of the citys lowest dives, a tavern on Fleshmarket Close. And he kept at least two mistresses, with whom he fathered five children.

It was, presumably, his spendthrift nature that helped push him from his rarefied world into the underworld, becoming one of Britains most notorious criminals. At night, he transformed into a top-notch burglarhis face obscured by a crepe maskand spent 20 years capering across the city. Often, he robbed friends and acquittances, finding opportune moments to swipe their keys, create duplicates, replace the original and later use the copy to enter their home or business.

Its likely Brodie began his double life as early as 1768, but his most prolific period came in the 18 months beginning in July 1786. At that time, he grew close with two men who would become his chief accomplices, George Smith, a traveling salesman, and John Brown, a convicted felon on the lam in Scotland facing deportation to an overseas penal colony. The trio, who all enjoyed drinks and cockfighting, struck up a fast friendship. From there, the Brodie Gang embarked on a blitz of burglaries, starting with a goldsmiths store the following fall.

Brodie fled the country, decamping for Amsterdam, a hair-breadth escapefrom a well-scented pack of bloodhounds.

They followed that with the robbery of a jewelers on Bridge Street, carrying off ten precious watches; a grocers on St. Andrew Street, where they purloined 350 pounds of highly valuable black tea; and even the University of Edinburgh, which lost a precious school heirlooma silver maceto the bandits.

By January 1788, authorities were straining every nerve to discover those responsible for the growing number of thefts, according to a chronicle at the time, claiming the crimes were strik[ing] terror to the hearts of wealthy Edinburghers.

Brodie, undaunted, planned their biggest heist yet. The city Excise Office was too tempting a target, and so after a dinner of chicken, herring, gin and beer on a blistery spring evening, Brodie, Smith, Brown and another man broke into the place armed with pistols. They turned up little, though, and their night was spoiled when an Excise Office employee returned, sending Brodie and the others into a hurried, disorganized retreat.

The police stepped up their search, and Edinburghs newspapers filled with ads placed by the investigators requesting information from the public. The reward had increased: 150 and the promise of a pardon, tooa clear ploy to break apart co-conspirators. It worked.

Brown cracked first, then Smith. Brodie fled the country, decamping for Amsterdam, a hair-breadth escapefrom a well-scented pack of bloodhounds, he remarked in a letter to a friend. A police search of his home turned up pick-locks, a set of false keys and pistols buried near his beloved gamecocks coop. A riveted public was scandalized by the revelations, with one editorial in the Edinburgh Evening Courant summing it up: With what amazement must it strike every friend to virtue and honesty to find that a person is charged with a crime who very lately distinguished rank among his fellow-citizens?

Deacon Brodie became Stevensons Kilgore Trout, his Randall Flag. A character he could not quit.

Brodie was apprehended a few months later. His trial was swift, lasting little more than a day, but the courtroom was packed; the publics interest in Brodies case well stoked. Throughout it all, he displayed nothing but refined mannersperfectly collectedrespectful to the Court, and when anything ludicrous occurred in the evidence he smiled as if he had been an indifferent spectator, the Edinburgh Advertiser notedeven when the jury handed down its verdict: guilty. Brodie would hang for his crimes.

The following October, he ascended the gallows dressed as finely as ever, hair carefully powdered in keeping with the trend of the time. A last step into the air brought the career of Deacon William Brodie to an end, wrote Stevenson in Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes, the first of several times he would feature Brodie in his work. He may be seen, a man harassed below a mountain of duplicity, slinking from a magistrates supper-room to a thieves ken, and pickeering among the closes by the flicker of a dark lamp.

Deacon Brodie became Stevensons Kilgore Trout, his Randall Flag. A character he could not quit. After Edinburgh in 1878, he and his friend the poet W.E. Henley joined up to dramatize Brodies life. They produced a five-act play, Deacon Brodie, or, The Double Life, which took some significant liberties with the deacons escapades. This included making him a cold-blooded murderer. In one scene toward the plays end, his sister discovers his evil-doings:

Mary: Wille, Willie!

Brodie: (taking the bloody dagger from the table). See, do you understand that?

Mary: Ah! What, what is it!

Brodie: Blood. I have killed a man.

Mary: You?

Brodie: I am a murderer; I was a thief before. Your brother the old mans only son!

Stevensons dialogue was not dagger sharp, and Deacon Brodie flopped almost immediately after opening in Bradford, England, shortly after Christmas 1882. George Bernard Shaw described it as pasteboard scenes and characters.

But four years later, Stevensons novel Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde drew praise on both sides of the Atlantic, with the New York Times deeming it thoroughly delightful, while The Times of London found it sensational, comparing it to the sombre masterpieces of Poe. Either the story was a flash of intuitive psychological research, dashed off in a burst of inspiration; or else it is the product of the most elaborate forethought, fitting together all the parts of an intricate and inscrutable puzzle, The Times concluded.

Stevenson wasnt shy about how he came up with the tale. When reporters caught up with him on a trip to New York, Stevenson, still sunken-eyed and sickly, explained his good doctors origins, saying that it came to me as a gift.

I am so much in the habit of making stories that I go on making them while asleep, he said. Sometimes they come to me in the form of nightmares, in so far that they make me cry out aloud. So soon as I awake, and it always awakens me when I get on a good thing, I set to work and put it together.

A few stray voices criticized the work as an overcooked fable that relied on cheap scares, but Stevenson only grinned in response. Such criticisms, he said, cannot fail to be suggestive of the braying of asses.

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Bogeyman And Gentleman: The Real-Life Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Forbes

1. Was read and admired by the Soviet underground

George Orwell. Nineteen Eight-Four

George Orwell (born Eric Blair) clicked with Russian readers. First, because1984and the parableAnimal Farmdrew clear parallels with Soviet society. And second, because his works were banned for many years inside the USSR, which meant only thing they were worth reading.

Orwells books began to be printed in thesamizdatof the 1960s, and brave readers were able to get hold of a copy for one nights reading. Vyacheslav Nedoshivin, the author of a new biography of Orwell (AST: Elena Shubina Publications, 2018), recalls how he spent such a night with colleagues from the newspaperKomsomolskaya Pravda.

I clearly remember how the door to the editorial office was locked, a pencil was surgically inserted into the telephone after removing the rotary disk (which supposedly thwarted wiretapping), and the conversation began in hushed tones. It was heart-pounding stuff, especially learning that your newspaper was just a tiny cog in the machine of the sprawling Ministry of Truth; that the disconnected phone was not to protect against the KGB, but from Big Brother, who sees everyone in the world; that Stalin, Khrushchev, and the immortal Brezhnev were Napoleon and Snowball inAnimal Farm,or simply power-hungry pigs (at this point my heart stopped pounding and leaped out of my chest!).

Nedoshivin was so impressed that he wrote his dissertation on the topic of dystopia, carried out the first philological analysis of1984in the USSR, and co-authored a translation ofAnimal Farminto Russian. He believes his biography is just one of many, many more to come.

George Orwell. Animal Farm (A special edition of the book with pictures by Ralph Steadman, is published by Secker & Warburg)

There was tremendous sympathy for the Russian Revolution in Britain, and revolutionary ideas pervaded the country. Orwell recalls a school test in which he had to list ten outstanding contemporaries he and almost the entire class named Vladimir Lenin among them.

At Eton College, where Orwell studied, it was fashionable to behave "like a Bolshevik." The future writer, like most well-read English teenagers, regarded himself as a socialist.

Naturally, the adult Orwell sympathized with the leftist movement. In 1936 he went to fight in the Spanish Civil War in the ranks of the left-wing Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). There he was wounded, but after recovering did not continue fighting, since the party had been banned as anti-Stalinist, and it was vital to keep such an ally as Stalin on the side of the International Brigades.

Later, in 1943-44, Orwell wrote his famous fairy-taleAnimal Farm a satire on the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist regime. At the time, it was considered too radical even for British censors. With the war in full swing, it seemed inappropriate to criticize a crucial ally, so it remained unpublished until 1945.

The KGB archive contains a dossier on Orwell in which he is described as the author of the most vile book about the Soviet Union. For many years his name was taboo in the USSR (Read more: 10 books that were banned in the USSR).

For his part, Orwell was eager to ensure that sympathy for the USSR did not spread throughout England. It is known that for many years he kept a special notebook in which he wrote down the names of people whom he suspected of having criminal leanings toward communism and the Stalinist regime. In 1949 he was offered a government job in counter-propaganda, but he declined, opting simply to give his list to the British Foreign Office (it was later published). The names included J.B. Priestley, Charlie Chaplin, George Bernard Shaw, and John Steinbeck with notes on each.

According to some accounts, Orwell had long-standing links to the British intelligence services, which allegedly even paid for his novels to be printed abroad, using them as anti-Soviet propaganda.

Eric Blair (George Orwell) from his Metropolitan Police file

As a young man, Orwell went to Paris in search of "writers inspiration." These years would later be chronicled in the autobiographical workDown and Out in Paris and London(1933). Like many writers eager to partake of the moveable feast (as Ernest Hemingway called Paris), Orwell was crushed by poverty. He was saved from starvation by a Russian migr who had fled to France to escape the Bolsheviks. He found Orwell a job as a washer-upper in a restaurant, which was frequented by Russians of various stripes.

Orwells social circle included several of them for example, he was acquainted with Russian migr artist Boris Anrep, known for his mosaics (four of which decorate the floor of the entrance to Londons National Gallery) and his affair with Anna Akhmatova.

Another of Orwells Russian acquaintances was migr Lydia Jackson (ne Zhiburtovich), who later became a writer under the pen name Elizaveta Fen. She was a friend of Orwells wife, and at some point she and the British author became drawn to one another. It is not known for certain how far things went. Lydia responded warmly to his hugs and even kisses, though she may have done so purely out of sympathy.

In the 1930s-40s, despite the choking censorship, the Soviet magazineInternational Literaturestill managed to print excerpts and reviews of Western novels (even JoycesUlysses, which was banned as immoral in many countries, including England). Editor-in-chief Sergei Dinamov is known to have written aletterto Orwell in 1937 asking him to send a copy of the latters bookThe Road to Wigan Pier, which he found interesting and wanted to review.

A few months later he received a response. Orwell apologized for not writing sooner he had just returned from Spain. He also wrote that he had reconsidered some of the views expressed in the book. Enclosing a copy as requested, he nevertheless warned the editor-in-chief that he had fought in Spain on the side of the POUM, which was now regarded as anti-Soviet: I tell you this because it may be that your paper would not care to have contributions from a POUM member, and I do not wish to introduce myself to you under false pretences.

The editor-in-chief was required to hand the letter over to the NKVD, and reply to Orwell that he was grateful for the latters sincerity, but was forced to break off their relationship.

A portrait of Yevgeny Zamyatin by famous Russian artist Boris Kustodiev

Penned in 1920, Yevgeny Zamyatins novelWewas immediately banned in the USSR and first published in the West only in 1927. Orwell read it much later, writing areviewof it in 1946.

He describesWeas certainly an unusual [book], and it is astonishing that no English publisher has been enterprising enough to reissue it. Orwell was greatly impressed that Zamyatin had written the book before the horrors of Stalinism, noting that he cannot have had the Stalin dictatorship in mind, and conditions in Russia in 1923 were not such that anyone would revolt against them on the ground that life was becoming too safe and comfortable. What Zamyatin seems to be aiming at is not any particular country but the implied aims of industrial civilization.

Orwell also drew in-depth parallels between Zamyatins novel and Aldous HuxleysBrave New World, exposing the source of much of Huxleys nightmare vision. Orwell acknowledged his own literary debt to Zamyatin, and numerous scholars have since highlighted the similarities between the two.

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5 things that connect legendary '1984' author George Orwell & Russia - Russia Beyond

The house I grew up in was not bookish so Ive made amends by filling my home with novels, biographies, travel books, works of popular science; every conceivable genre. When I was a child it worried me that I might not manage to read every book in the world. Now it seems entirely possible that I wont even get to read every book in my house. A recent brush with cancer brought this fear into sharp focus but Im on the mend now. My book stacks seem less daunting, although they never grow shorter since I add to them every week.

My definition of wealth is having the wherewithal to buy any book that takes your fancy, including hardbacks. All I remember from my childhood home are random editions of those Readers Digest condensed books, anthologies of abridged bestsellers of the day. Decades later, I still recall the searing heat and harshness of the Australian outback as Neville Shute described it in A Town Like Alice. Abridgement made the shark attacks more frequent in Peter Benchleys enthralling Jaws. I can trace my passion for crime fiction back to a bookcase stuffed with battered Agatha Christie novels that stood in a corner of my grandmothers sitting room. I worked my way through them over the course of a rainy summer.

When I was about nine years old, my mother changed my life by steering me in the direction of our local library in the Dublin suburb of Terenure. Her small act of kindness was transformative. I remember swapping my junior library card for an adult one, green for blue, or perhaps it was the other way around, and starting shyly on the shelves just inside the door. With no one to guide me, thank goodness, early choices included Asimov and Austen. The books that stayed with me, I left behind in the junior library. My favourites, borrowed so frequently that they may as well have been mine, were gripping tales of magic and adventure written by a person called E Nesbit. Im not sure when I discovered that E stood for Edith.

The best of these was a time-travelling thriller with the intriguing title The Story of the Amulet. Lost between its covers, I accompanied Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and their baby brother, Hilary, known fondly as the Lamb, back in time to ancient Egypt. In historical Mesopotamia, we stood awestruck before the gates to Babylon as they shone like gold in the rising sun. We marvelled at the beauty of the Temple of Poseidon in the lost city of Atlantis. In their company, I encountered Emperor Julius Caesar as he stood on the shores of occupied Gaul gazing across towards England. I too longed to live in Nesbits verdant, utopian London of the future, where school is delightful, mothers and fathers share the burden of childcare, and everyone wears comfortable clothing.

At the height of her popularity, literary magazine John OLondons Weekly declared, Take a book by E Nesbit into a family of young boys and girls and they will fall upon it like wolves. A profile from the September 1905 issue of the Strand Magazine, where her stories were serialised, praised her almost uncanny insight into the psychology of childhood. The key to Nesbits appeal, the enduring devotion she engenders in children, is her ability to write just like one of us. The adventures she describes, though clearly impossible, feel utterly authentic. Surely, they could happen to you or me if we were fortunate enough to dig up a grumpy Psammead or stumble upon a broken amulet in an old junk shop.

In Wings and the Child, Nesbits manual for a successful childhood, she explained how she achieved this: Only by remembering how you felt and thought when you yourself were a child can you arrive at any understanding of the thoughts and feelings of children. Of the children in her Psammead trilogy Five Children and It, The Phoenix and The Carpet, and The Story of the Amulet second cousins once removed to the Bastable children from her earlier books, she wrote: The reason why those children are like real children is that I was a child once myself, and by some fortunate magic I remembered exactly how I used to feel and think about things.

Nesbit came of age in the Victorian era but she had no interest in leaving us more of the moralising tales she was exposed to as a child. In Treasure Seekers and Borrowers, Marcus Crouch, English librarian and influential commentator on childrens books, explained how she threw away their [the Victorians] strong, sober, essentially literary style and replaced it with the miraculously colloquial, flexible and revealing prose which was her unique contribution to the childrens novel. Nesbit wove her whimsy into the everyday lives of children in such a convincing fashion that we, her devoted readers, will not easily let it go. She offered us the potential for magic at a time in our lives when the boundary between reality and imagination is at its most porous.

Nesbits own early experiences fueled a vivid imagination capable of conjuring up phantoms at every turn. A nervous, solitary child, she experienced loss and displacement from the age of four. Circumstances conspired to deny her a formal education, but she read voraciously and indiscriminately during her peripatetic early years. As a teenager, she wrote poems, which her mother sent to the editor of Sunday Magazine. He published several. When I got the proof I ran round the garden shouting Hooray! at the top of my voice, to the scandal of the village and the vexation of my family, Nesbit recalled.

In Secret Gardens, Humphrey Carpenter described the adult Nesbit as an energetic hack, keen to try anything to support her wayward husband and her odd household. Her abiding passion was for poetry with a socialist theme but she rarely had time to indulge this since she was obliged to write for money, a constraint that generations of children have reason to be grateful for. It fell to her to support her charismatic but unreliable husband, Hubert Bland, and their three children. The first of these, Paul, arrived two months after his parents were married, suggesting reluctance on one side at least. Nesbit added to her household by adopting the two children Bland fathered with her close friend Alice Hoatson, and taking Hoatson in as well.

After Blands business failed and he fell victim to smallpox, Nesbit would put her small children to bed then stay up late, composing verses to accompany the greeting cards she painted for Raphael Tuck & Sons. Later, when she was commissioned to write stories for the Strand Magazine, she would work feverishly to meet looming deadlines, filling page after page of the glossy paper she favoured before flinging each one to the floor until her desk became an island in a sea of unedited work. At the end of each session, she would gather these pages together to revise them. Literary success came relatively late. The first of her Bastable books, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, inspired by her childhood adventures with her brothers, Alfred and Harry, was published in 1899 when Nesbit was in her early 40s.

Nesbits experience of poverty engendered a strong sense of social justice, which she channeled into her stories. During a time of astonishing political upheaval, she was instrumental in introducing socialist thinking into British intellectual life. A founder member of the Fabian Society, she counted fellow members George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells among her closest friends. One practical manifestation of her campaign for the alleviation of poverty in London was the annual party she hosted for impoverished children living just beyond her doorstep in Deptford. She was an early environmentalist and some of her finest writing celebrates the natural beauty of the English countryside. She detested creeping urbanisation, the ugly little streets crawled further and further out of the town eating up the green country like greedy yellow caterpillars.

Edith Nesbit is one of the worlds most important writers. She has entertained and inspired generations of us. She put the best of herself into her books for children. Some of her closest friendships were with her young fans and she often wrote them into her stories. A strikingly attractive woman with a keen sense of fun, she attracted a circle of admirers who left fascinating accounts of her in their letters and memoirs. As Marcus Crouch points out, no writer for children today is free of debt to this remarkable woman. CS Lewis borrowed his wardrobe from one of her stories. JK Rowling identifies with her more than any other writer.

Jacqueline Wilson brought the first installment of her Psammead series up to date with Four Children and It. I was astonished to discover that just two full biographies had been devoted to E Nesbit, both long out of print. It has been my great pleasure to write a third, The Life and Loves of E Nesbit, published by Duckworth this month.

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E Nesbit: JK Rowling identifies with her more than any other writer - The Irish Times

A Belgian Navy frigate conducting exercises in the Irish Sea was tracked by Afloat days in advance of a visit to Dublin Port and in the run up to this week's Brexit Deal finally struck in Brussels, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The frigate BNS Louise-Marie (F931) under Commander Coppieters de Gibson had carried out crew training exercises off Lambay Island in the Irish Sea in addition to waters between Wicklow Head and the Lln Peninsula, north Wales.

Also engaged was the Irish Naval Service UK built L George Bernard Shaw (P64) which took part in the PASSEX training exercises with BNS Louise-Marie as the frigate transited the Irish Sea en route to Dublin Port for the five day visit. These exercises allowed the INS to practice core naval skills and ensure interoperability.

Following completion of training, BNS Louise-Marie, a former Dutch Navy Karel Doorman-class frigate berthed in Dublin on Sunday. The visit was to enable crew rest and recreation and an opportunity for Pierre-Emmanuel De Bauw, Ambassador of Belgium to Ireland to pay a visit on board and meet the crew.

On the frigate's final day in the Irish capital on Thursday (the Brexit Deal was announced), this aptly coincided with an event organised by the Belgian Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce in Ireland. The BLCCIE's guest speaker, John J McGrane, director-general of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce, spoke about Brexit and the need for vigilance over future EU-UK relationships.

In a week of intense political negotiations in mainland Europe, commuters here at home using the Tom Clarke (East-Link) bridge would of observed the naval visitor berthed at the port's North Quay Wall Extension. At the stern on the aft deck was a NATO frigate helicopter.

Commissioned into service in 1991 as HNLMS Willem van der Zaan, the frigate had a career with the Royal Dutch Netherlands Navy until decomissioned in 2006. Three years later the frigate was renamed BNS Marie Louise by Queen Paola of Belgium. The frigate's homeport is at the Zeebrugge Naval Base.

Today, Afloat.ie tracked the naval vessel off Fishguard Bay in south Wales. Arriving this morning to Fishguard was the ferry Stena Europe, recently returned fresh from refit in Turkey. The country (a member state of NATO) is spread across two continents, Europe and Asia.

By early this afternoon the BNS Marie-Louise had departed Welsh waters and likewise the Stena Europe had headed west-bound into the St. Georges Channel. The frigate was astern of the Rosslare 'Europort'bound ferry albeit at some distance away.

As Afloat previously reported there have been discussions to develope a service linking the Irish Europort with mainland Europe through the French port of Le Havre.

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Belgian Navy Conduct Exercises With Naval Service On Irish Sea In the Run Up to Brexit Deal - Afloat

InThe Northumbrians: North-East England and its People,Dan Jacksonoffers a welcome new history of the North East, demonstrating how many aspects of its culture grew out of centuries of border warfare and industry. In showing that the North East was innovative, resourceful and enlightened, as well as dangerous, poverty-stricken and exhausted, this deeply researched book reveals the compelling past of this seemingly peripheral corner of England, writesTom Draper, whose interview with the author can be readhere.

The Northumbrians: North-East England and its People. Dan Jackson. Hurst. 2019.

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The notion that North-East England has been overlooked, patronised, forgotten and misunderstood runs through Dan JacksonsThe Northumbrians, a welcome examination of the last 2000 years of history in this seemingly peripheral corner of England. What may be seen today as a distant and uneventful region for Jackson deserves not only considerable scholarly interest and attention but popular engagement. This is a book for both historians and the general public and one which succeeds in merging a lifelong fascination and enthusiasm for the people and history of the North East with a scholarly scepticism and reluctance to engage in the exercise of navel-gazing.

Jackson has chosen the Northumbrians as his catch-all term for the people of the two historic counties of Northumberland and Durham. This avoids bogging us down in the imprecise demarcation of Geordies and Mackems, the two feuding tribes of Tyne and Wear whose modern rivalry has obscured how much they share in common (vii). It also ensures that the rural and middle-class inhabitants of Northumberland and Durham are included groups traditionally neglected by the urban working-class associations commonly made with Geordie as well as connecting the experience of the present with the deep-rooted and almost unchanging cultural mores that have persisted over centuries (vii).

This preoccupation with Northumbria has had a long allure in the North East. Jackson stands as a twenty-first-century heir to the New Northumbrians of the nineteenth century, a loose movement who saw themselves as alternative, cultured and historic people distinct from the national norm. An interest in a meaningful past and a sense of an ever-changing present fed this concern for the region and for the Northumbria of Bede, St. Cuthbert and the castles, hills and crumbling Roman ruins that remain far from the smog and soot of industrial Tyneside and Wearside. With a perspective unavailable to the original New Northumbrians, Jackson is able to trace the bonds which connect the nineteenth century with the medieval and modern periods. This is a book which looks for continuities rather than change, channelling Fernand Braudelslongue dure, and seeks to show how the hard-working, heavy drinking, sociable, macho and sentimental North East grew out of hundreds of years of contested border warfare and dangerous, but stimulating, industry.

Few histories of North-East England take the grand sweep of time selected byThe Northumbriansand few have the range of sources, including poetry, song, art, film and television, analysed succinctly here. The book is arranged thematically rather than chronologically a decision much to its benefit and yet this composition still allows for a neat Bede to Brexit structure. Included are chapters on the North Easts medieval past; the martial, fighting tradition prevalent throughout the centuries; the work of the great inventors, scientists, engineers and tinkerers who formed the Northumbrian Enlightenment; the landscape and architecture (with a walking tour through the Northumbrian Riviera) of the region; its endemic sociability, hedonism and boisterous drinking culture; and, finally, the current political scene, where the old assumptions about a Labour-voting region are scrutinised.

There are elements of geography overlooked by other historians who have commonly seen the hyper-masculine, hard-working stereotype of the contemporary North East as stemming from the realities of working in the mines and industrial spaces of the region. Jackson certainly believes that work in dangerous industry has sustained a sense of toughness and a Stakhanovite pride in hard work, but a heavily contested Anglo-Scottish border came first and made sure that violence was the dominant factor in Northumbrian lives in a way that was absent elsewhere in the rest of England (26). The regions martial tradition, and its formidable fighting record in the two World Wars, emerges out of its blood-soaked past just as living in a warzone made it prudent to huddle together for warmth and safety (28), and arguably accounts for its modern sentimentality, solidarity and communalism.

The macho-posturing associated with North East men may be seen today as one of the uglier aspects of the regions historical hangovers, but learning, literacy and curiosity have also been part of its story through the ages. The greatness of Northumbria in the Dark Ages was based less on its political power than on the distinctive Christian culture that flowered there in art and learning and religious piety (9). This emphasis on literacy, exemplified in the medieval period by the Lindisfarne Gospels, theCodex Amiatinusand the work of the Venerable Bede, filters through into the second golden age of Northumbrian history: the great era of the Northumbrian Enlightenment and the extraordinary inventiveness of the Industrial Revolution.

This is a story usually told through the lives of gentleman inventors and tinkerers George and Robert Stephenson, Lord Armstrong, Joseph Swan, Charles Parsons but a focus on the achievements of many notable women Mary Astell, Jane Gomeldon, Josephine Butler, Grace Darling and the rigidly patriarchal society they inhabited freshens Jacksons account. The rivers Tyne and Wear were then a veritable Silicon Valley of Georgian England (63). Nineteenth-century Tyneside was a sort of Dallas or Dubai or even Florence of the Industrial Revolution, both entrepreneurial and highly literate (78); a centre of innovation, printing and study which welcomed many great figures including Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe, Jean Paul Marat, Ea de Queirs, Oscar Wilde, Yevgeni Zamyatin, George Bernard Shaw and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others.

This interest in knowledge and ingenuity is further illuminated in the twentieth century when a working-class intellectualism found expression in the pit villages and towns of Northumberland and Durham. Jackson admires his pitman painter grandfather and other autodidacts such as Thomas Burt, Jack Lawson, Sid Chaplin, John Gray and Norman Cornish, and discusses their work with insight and intelligence.The achievements of the working-class intellectual and leader of Newcastle City Council (1959-65) T. Dan Smith, however, are brushed over, with Jackson propagating many of the simplistic villain narratives that have found currency recently. Nevertheless, his concern for the accomplishments of many little-known Northumbrians livens the narration and will influence future work on the regions cultural history.

There is a sense of a lost world in these pages, of a once great time now forgotten, even though so much of the past still arguably hangs over the current scene. That the North East was once so innovative, resourceful and enlightened, as well as dangerous, poverty-stricken and exhausted, may surprise some. For those yet to reckon with the compelling past of this peripheral corner of England, Dan JacksonsThe Northumbrians, a work of deep research and lifelong fascination, is an excellent place to start.

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Note: This review was first published on the LSE Review of Books.

Tom Draperhas an MA in Modern History from Durham University. He writes about North East England attom-draper.com.You can follow him on twitterhere.

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Book Review | The Northumbrians: North-East England and its People by Dan Jackson - British Politics and Policy at LSE

The launch week of Where Will The Art Go? - a new campaign which aims to highlight the loss of significant cultural spaces in Dublin - consists of three events; at the Bernard Shaw, The Workman's Club and Lost Lane.

Coming Monday, October 21, She Networks' campaign Where Will The Art Go? launches with a special showcase at the Bernard Shaw. The party will feature Dublin alt-rock band Gypsies on the Autobahn, as well as voices from the growing hip hop scene in Dublin such as UppBeat, amongst others.

The launch at the Bernard Shaw is followed by the Indigo Sessions at The Workman's Club on Wednesday.

One day later, on Thursday, the launch will close with showcases by Little Hours, KTG and Nathan Mac at Lost Lane. Get your tickets here.

The Where Will The Art Go? campaign has three purposes: To give a place for our homegrown and local talent to share their concerns and showcase their work, to market the venues that nurture this development in order for them to fill seats and become more sustainable and finally, to show the government and the city council how important culture is to its people.

Initiated by Rebecca Breene McDonnell, Where Will The Art Go? was a concept that she and her business partner Sorcha have spent many years thinking about. According to the women themselves, "the campaign came into fruition following BodyTonic's announcement that the cultural safe space, The Bernard Shaw, would be closing its doors at the hands of Dublin City Council."

"Nobody is taking action, so we must and we will", McDonnell says. "We are fortunate that we went to a media university and have a large network of people we can work with and we promise that we will use this positively. We want to be a lighthouse in this storm, starting with this campaign."

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UppBeat, Gypsies on the Autobahn to play Where Will The Art Go? launch at Bernard Shaw - hotpress.com

Errors in published histories, misreading, selective perception, willful historical fiction on the big screen, little screen, and web; alternative facts simply made up to suit various agendas; and the desire to believe what some wish to be true have created a constantly reverberating echo chamber of false knowledge which George Bernard Shaw warned is more dangerous than ignorance.

This post is an antidote for some of it.

Related: In 1919, the first pro-gay movie was made. A year later, it was banned.

The origin of faggot

Faggot as a male homosexual slur did not derive from burning gays at the stake. The word is English and did not evolve from another language. England hanged but did not burn gays at the stake as some other countries did. Its first known published gay connotation appeared in 1914s A Vocabulary of Criminal Slang: All the fagots (sissies) will be dressed in drag at the ball tonight.

Any connection to the firewood used for executions is pure fantasy, says Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends, 2004.

Victims included Bishop John Atherton and his alleged lover John Childe; both hanged in 1640.

Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin

The few details actually documented about American Revolutionary War Lieutenant Frederick Gotthold Enslin continue to generate ever more amplified, ever more colorful retellings based solely on speculation and wishful thinking.

He was not thrown out of the Continental Army for being gay nor being homosexual nor homosexuality nor for his sexual orientation in 1778.

Those are states of being, and we know nothing of his sexual orientation. He was thrown out for same-sex behavior, but that doesnt tell us his motivation. He could have simply been pursuing sexual release with another man because a woman wasnt available as men in the military or prison or all-boys schools have for eternity.

But, contrary to ubiquitous assertions that behavior was not sodomy. He was charged with and found guilty of attempting to commit sodomy. While General George Washingtons secretary recorded the abhorrence and detestation of such infamous crimes, there was no reference to, let alone definition of, sodomy in the 5th Article 18th Section of the Articles of War which he was charged with violating.

Thus we have nothing to tell us which of the several things that accusation could have meant it actually did mean in this case.

It could have meant attempting to force sex (of whatever kind) upon someone; apparently in this instance from the scanty records, Pvt. John Monhort. It could also mean consensual attempted anal sex but without completing penetration, and, as gay historian Rictor Norton has noted, the phrase was sometimes used to encompass completed consensual same-sex acts other than anal intercourse such as fellatio.

Nor, contrary to assertions, was he dishonorably discharged because the term didnt exist yet.

Nor, as often claimed, was his sword broken over his head. The diary entry of an eyewitness to his drumming out, Lt. James McMichael, mentioned only that the coat of the delinquent was turned wrong side out. The phrase drumming out used metaphorically today was literal then. The regiments drum and fife corps played while the condemned exited the camp.

Maj. Gen. Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben

Articles exist asserting that both Benjamin Franklin and General Washington unequivocally knew that German Maj. Gen. Frederich Wilhelm von Steuben was gay and that his hiring proved they were ahead-of-their-time Friends of the Gays. Some justify the assertion by referencing late author Randy Shilts and his lengthy study of gays in the American military, Conduct Unbecoming.

Actually Shilts wrote: The acceptance of General Steuben and his contributions to the fledgling American military did not mean there was even tacit acceptance of homosexuality by Franklin or Washington.

If they actually knew about his sexuality, his employment was still more a matter of war, like politics, making strange bedfellows, no pun intended. Nor, contrary to the misreading of documents of the time, was von Steuben fleeing possible prosecution in France but, rather, his native Germany.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was certainly a gay martyr, but he was not a gay rights trailblazer who refused to deny his identity. He denied it multiple times over three trials; repeatedly insisting that his attachment to the various men linked to him was not sexual but only deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect.

The first gay magazine in the world

Der Eigene, first published in Berlin in 1896, was not the worlds first homosexual journal nor was it initially a homosexual periodical at all. Originally it was an anarchist magazine, not becoming EIN BLATT FR MNNLICHE KULTUR (A Journal for Male Culture) until 1898. Along with articles and poems, apparently it was the first periodical to feature nude photographs of men intended for gay subscribers.

The first gay periodical was published by German Karl Heinrichs Ulrichs in 1870: Prometheus Beitrge zur Erforschung des Naturrthsels des Uranismus und zur Errterung der sittlichen and gesellschaftlichen Interessen des Urningthums (Prometheus. Contributions to the investigation of the riddle of nature Uranismus and to the discussion of the moral and social interests of Urningthum). His hopes for subsequent issues failed for lack of adequate subscribers.

Franklin Roosevelt and homophobia

Claims that then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Roosevelts June 1917 article in the Ladies Home Journal, What the Navy Can Do for Your Boy, was exploiting the publics great fear of homosexual influence on American young men are contradicted by one of the articles photos a group of sailors on the U.S.S. Pennsylvania with the caption, Your Boy Would Not be Lonely on a Battleship.

Nor, contrary to persistent outraged claims, did Roosevelt create or order or use his own staff for the 1919 gay witch-hunt at Newport, Rhode Islands, Naval Training Station.

Such assertions reveal the failure of the authors of such claims to carefully read Lawrence Murphys original research on the witch-hunt published in 1988 as Perverts by Official Order.

It was instigated at the Newport base by a pathologically homophobic but persuasive Chief Machinists Mate not in Washington by Roosevelt and had been going on nearly a month before Roosevelt was even told about it. Those in Newport did not need his permission but only approached his boss, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, because they needed funding to continue. Daniels was leaving on a trip to Europe and told Roosevelt to meet with them.

Yes, his subsequent support was homophobic, but his later adamant denials that he had not known, let alone approved, sailors being told to engage in gay sex to entrap their victims, Navy and civilian, is credible, particularly given he had tried unsuccessfully to get the Justice Department to take over the investigation.

Lili Elbe reality check

As noted in my earlier article about Christine Jorgensen, Danish Girl Lili Ilse Elvenes/Lili Elbe was not the first person to have gender confirmation surgery. Her first operation in 1930 was supervised by legendary gay sexologist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld in Berlin who had been involved in such surgeries since at least 1906.

Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, the Institute for Sexual Science, and book burning

Demonized for years as the Jewish Apostle of Sodomy, the mob attack on Hirschfeld that nearly killed him some newspapers did report his death happened in Munich in October 1920, not Berlin in May 1933 when a Nazi-affiliated youth group ransacked his Institute for Sexual Science.

Time and again one reads that the Institute and all of its contents were subsequently burned or destroyed. While most of the thousands of confiscated books, photos, and others items were burned, some of the materials were strangely held back and offered for sale through intermediaries back to Hirschfeld who was in Paris by then.

Further, anticipating such threats, his former lover Karl Giese had smuggled some of the most important documents out of the country.

Nor were all of the materials about homosexuality or gender identity. The Institute studied heterosexuality, too, and had a large medical practice for such things as contraception, infertility, and impotence. Nor was that the only book burning that day

A May 10, 1933, Associated Press article, along with several others, reported, Proscribed volumes [were] collected all over Germany for public burning blacklisted books from private as well as public libraries of ungerman influences All books of a socialistic, Jewish or Pacifist trend are especially marked for destruction.

The authors the article specifically named whose works were included were Helen Keller and Albert Einstein, neither of which, to the best of my knowledge, were L or G or B or T.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance. George Bernard Shaw.

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Inconvenient truths: Potholes along the yellow brick road of LGBTQ history - LGBTQ Nation

You wont find the word in the Oxford dictionary but its there in Wikipedia. Paraprosdokians is defined as a figure of speech in which the second half of a phrase or sentence is surprising or unexpected. It can be a clever form of wit or a neat way of making a dig.

I most enjoy paraprosdokians when theyre used as a put down. PG Wodehouses description of a fat woman is devastating: She looks as though shes been poured into her clothes and forgot to say when. So, too, Groucho Marxs parting comment to his hostess: Ive had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasnt it.

For debaters paraprosdokians are a Godsend. Here are a few from the Cambridge Union which are a part of the conventional armoury used for tackling awkward opponents: Hes a modest man with much to be modest about, Hes a well balanced person with a chip on both shoulders, and Our quarrels are a case of mind over matter I dont mind and he doesnt matter.

Winston Churchill was one of the few politicians who used paraprosdokians to great effect. Often the United States was his target: You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after theyve tried everything else. But even Clemenceau, though French, had a knack for it. And guess who his target was? America is the only country to have progressed from barbarism to decadence without experiencing the intervening stage of civilization. Theres a delightful but possibly apocryphal anecdote about George Bernard Shaw and Winston Churchill which is entirely based on this delicious figure of speech. The playwright sent the politician two tickets to the first night of one of his new plays. For you and a friend, if you have one, the accompanying note read. Not a bit put out, Churchill replied I cant make the first night but Ill be there for the second, if there is one.

My late cousin Ranjit, who spent his life researching the ephemeral and the obscure, once sent me a joyous collection of paraprosdokians. Theyre the sort you could cheerfully use. Memorise a few and wait for the first good opportunity! Here they are:-

The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but its still on my list. If I agreed with you, wed both be wrong. A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine. I used to be indecisive. Now Im not so sure. I didnt say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research. But heres a special one for all of you fed up of television: The evening news is where they begin with Good Evening and then proceed to tell you why it isnt.

When I told my secretary, Santosh Kumar, I was going to write about paraprosdokians he did a bit of research and came up with a few delightful ones. Theyre both witty and clever: Where theres a will, I want to be in it; Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak; To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first & call whatever you hit the target; Youre never too old to learn something stupid; Im supposed to respect my elders, but its getting harder & harder for me to find one now.

Let me leave you with a tongue-in-cheek truth about men and women which might be a trifle sexist but is also largely true. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut and still think theyre sexy.

Karan Thapar is the author of Devils Advocate: The Untold Story

The views expressed are personal

First Published:Oct 19, 2019 20:42 IST

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The subtle humour in paraprosdokians, writes Karan Thapar - Hindustan Times

October 17, 2019

"This book happens at a moment, World War II, when it really was at the brink -- the Allies could have lost," says Bret Baier of his latest book, Three Days at the Brink: FDR's Daring Gamble to Win World War II. Baier, anchor and executive editor of Fox News Channel's Special Report and the network's chief political anchor, is a 1992 graduate of DePauw University. He appeared on WAGA-TV/Fox 5 in Atlanta this morning to preview the book, which will be published October 22 by William Morrow.

Baier says he focuses on an "overlooked moment" from November 1943. "We were losing in Europe, Hitler was on the march, things were not going great in the Pacific, and at this moment the leaders -- the big three, which is FDR, Churchill and Stalin -- designed to have this secret meeting in Tehran and they plan D-Day. And onbviously Operation Overlord, as it was known, became the moment that changed the dynamic."

The publisher will also offer a young reader's edition of the book. "I think sometimes history gets lost in our schools," Baier tells the program. "So we're doing a contest where we're going to give the big book and the young reader's edition to two schools' libraries in each state across the country."

It's the third book in Baier's "three days" series: the first entry was Three Days in January: Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission; followed by Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire. Baier also authored Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love. He received the 2017 Sol Taishoff Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, the National Press Foundations highest honor for a broadcast journalist.

Access the clip here.

A 1992 graduate of DePauw, Baier was an English (composition) and political science double major and captained the Tiger golf team. He was among the first students to work in the then-new Center for Contemporary Media. While an undergradute Baier interned with Bernard Shaw at CNN and landed his first professional job at WJWJ-TV (PBS) in Beaufort, South Carolina. He also worked at WREX (NBC) in Rockford, Illinois, and WRAL (CBS) in Raleigh, North Carolina, before joining Fox in 1998. Before being named anchor of Special Report, he served as the network's national security correspondent and chief White House correspondent.

Baier returned to DePauw for Old Gold Weekend in 2013 and spoke as part of the Timothy and Sharon Ubben Lecture Series and received the University's Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.

"DePauw is a big part of who I am, it's a big part of who I became, and I really like coming back here," he told the homecoming audience.

The talk is summarized here; video is embedded below.

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Bret Baier '92 Discusses His Upcoming Book, Three Days at the Brink: FDR's Daring Gamble to Win World War II - DePauw University

Shakespeares whining schoolboy creeping like a snail unwillingly to school might well be more full of beans were he to be around today in California. The Golden Gate state has passed a law barring middle schools from beginning classes earlier than 8 am, and high schools before 8.30 am, to give students more sleep time. California is the first state in the US to adopt a law that says aye to more shut-eye, but it could become a trendsetter. Sleep therapists say that slumber unlumbers the mind of harmful stress and its beneficial for people of all ages to get in forty-one, or even forty-two, winks in preference to the conventionally recommended forty.

Indeed, sleeping on the job can sometimes prove to be the most efficient way of getting the job done. The German chemist Kekul is said to have hit upon the structure of the carbon molecule while he was in the arms of Morpheus. Freud used his innovative interpretation of dreams as the keystone to the understanding of the psyche through the working of the subconscious. As the poet more succinctly put it, I sleep, and my soul awakens. When a playwright protg of Bernard Shaw remonstrated that the Irish dramatist had been caught napping during a performance of the acolytes latest work to which hed been invited to give his opinion on, the Shavian response was, Sleep, sir, is an opinion.

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Golden Gate state puts snooze in the news - Economic Times