https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?search=bugle&title=Special:MediaSearch&go=Go&type=image I was doing some work recently on a Victorian newspaper with an undeniably laudable social purpose. It was called the Fonetic Nuz (Phonetic News) and appeared in January 1849. It was the brainchild of one Alexander Ellis – a polymath who, having graduated in Classics and Mathematics from the University of Cambridge, was enabled …
TO FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE Lady! in our England’s story There are names we proudly say – Names of women writ in Heaven, With us still, and passed away; But in all the shining record Which the angels love to read, Few can claim the earnest homage By our hearts to thee decreed. Lady! when to weeping …
I’m currently suffering with my first cold of the year. It has hit me quite hard. I think one of the unfortunate consequences of the necessary arrangements made during the Covid-19 pandemic is that many including me, by acting to avoid spreading Covid, avoided other regular viruses. So, my system is less prepared and working …
Perhaps more than any other commodity, newspapers have a wide range of secondary, mostly unintended uses. Of course, two hundred years ago, papers were relatively expensive – especially the less common daily ones. Although manual printing presses were not expensive to operate, the various taxes levied on newspapers, which operated both as revenue-raising and an …
Photo by Kevin Gordon, obtained from Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Zigzags#/media/File:Zig-Zags_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1161095.jpg As this cleverly-captured image demonstrates, we find zig-zag or alternating patterns all around us. They can be used to warn – of an approaching pedestrian crossing as part of road safety. They can be used to improve stability, in structures such as fences or screens. Zig-zags …
One of my main arguments in researching short-lived nineteenth-century newspapers is that the periodical press was in a state of near-constant flux in the nineteenth century; it was only towards the end of the 1800s and into the 1900s that there was a degree of consolidation into familiar, established publications (and also clearer separation between …
Identity is, simultaneously, the simplest and most slippery of concepts. The impassioned debates today pitting the determinism of biological sex against the (arguably) social construct of gender identity is simply the latest iteration of age-old tensions between individuals and the societies within and against which they define themselves. If linguistic ability is inherent in the …
It was on the final day of the RSVP conference – Saturday 15th June – in Stirling that I noticed this magnificent collection of thistles. It seemed an appropriate visual image for a place so associated with William Wallace – spiky, hardy, standing proudly independent of the surrounding vegetation. I’m happy to say that there …
What is it that links people as disparate as footballers Duncan Ferguson and Billy Bremner*; King James VI of Scotland and I of England#; jockey Willie Carson*; journalist Kirsty Young § and former Liberal Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman≠? All have a deep association with the ancient Royal Burgh, and now city, of Stirling in central …
Today Liverpool welcomes the new Cunard liner Queen Anne. I hope she enjoys a long and successful life at sea – and doesn’t suffer the fate that befell the clipper James Baines in Liverpool’s Huskisson Dock on 22nd April 1858. As reported in the press at the time – including this paragraph from the Illustrated …