Other Men's Flowers

I was not greatly impressed by Evelyn Waugh's 1945 novel, which is not surprising as it "deals with the unmerited and unilateral ac...

The Companion to British History defines this as suspect linguistic usage in which familiar expressions convey different concepts from those...

By special request, another hippopotamus. This one is James Thurber's. "What have you done with Dr Millmoss?"

...or, avoid all unnecessary complication and elaboration. This was Escoffier's advice to chefs but it applies to websites as well as it...

Inhabited by some of the most warlike peoples on the face of the earth, the country has always been glowering, secretive and veiled in intr...

Yes, I know you've heard them all before and that there are dozens more. The chances are that he never said many of them, or that if he ...

No 23 in an occasional series of extracts from The Postcard Century May 1907: Minnie in Canada writes to her sister Melinda Ahearne in Law...

This fits nicely into my series of helpful posts about things you can put into or on your ears ( pins , candles , your little finger ) but i...

I am now connected to the internet again after BT cut me off from it for six days; bad scran to their management and all their shareholders....

Samuel Johnson exhibited a rare lack of self-assurance when he gave this definition: " A disease, I suppose, of cattle ". We shall...

Paul Crum (Roger Pettiward) drew this for Punch in 1937. I always used to think of it as one of Thurber's; perhaps I confused it with ...

Newspaper headlines are there to catch readers' attention and make them marvel, or at least excite their curiosity. Here are four recent...

Recycled posts from 2005 parody Not all nannies are wise and kind francophilia Shakespeare and subtitles in French personal The way Wodehous...

Japanese knotweed, fallopia japonica or sachalinensis , has arrived in the UK and established itself over the last few years; huge and cost...

Or, "Does your English let you down?". These are alternative headlines to the longest-running ad in newspaper history. It was pla...

In a current TV commercial for a car insurance company we hear the warm, avuncular voice of cuddly old Stephen Fry telling us: "...we...

What to publish for the millenary * post in Other Men's Flowers ? How about some pointless statistics such as that every month for five...

No, you probably don't. There's not much point in anyone asking you this question, because it is unlikely that you are one of the ha...

Most of us remember fondly the final, poignant episode of the World War I Blackadder series in which it was made clear that walking around w...

No 22 in a series of extracts from The Postcard Century . July 1906: ...you see I have got you a P.C. like you wanted writes EC in Faygate...