Tag Archives: paranoia

From the diary of a writer-publisher: 29

5 April 2024 I have received from a cousin the above image of our grandfather’s regimental sword. This plate on its scabbard seems to supply some context to what I knew about his military career. He joined up in 1894 … Continue reading

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Cambridge Tales 6: ‘The Tower’

A small brown-man had a narrow bedroom, a spacious living-room, and a gyp-room (more like a galley) at the top of a Gothic quadrangle. The living-room contained a fluted white mantelpiece with a gas-fire, a moth-eaten charcoal grey sofa against … Continue reading

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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 21

7 January Almost themed, one could say, in Calderonia, Cambridge academic Ruth Scurr has written a meaty review in today’s Spectator of Claire Harman’s experiment in biography All Sorts of Lives: Katherine Mansfield and the Art of Risking Everything. Anyone who writes … Continue reading

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Only one subject…

For the West, the most shameful part of the Ukrainian War is that if we had stood by the assurances of security that we gave Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 after negotiating the transfer of its nuclear arsenal to … Continue reading

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Russia (concluded)

A hundred years ago today Red Guards began occupying key installations in St Petersburg. By early tomorrow morning the Winter Palace had been infiltrated and the Provisional Government arrested. The Bolsheviks, a party of fanatical, fascistic Utopians, subsequently seized power … Continue reading

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A posh word for it…

The other day, I came across a word that was new to me: apophenia. It is not in Chambers Dictionary, and at first I wondered whether it was a misprint. But, of course, there is masses about it on the internet. … Continue reading

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