250 GTO / bornrich.com
What makes a motorcar ‘sexy’? The design of course, possibly its top speed, its comfort, sometimes the luxury of leather seats. It is the car itself which is sexy, because actually having sex in it can be extremely uncomfortable. Here you can find a list of my personal choices. (more…)
Warriors in the film Dances with Wolves / landercasper.com
The original inhabitants of North America migrated from Asia around 30,000 years ago. Famine, constant wars and disease counted for many Indian settlers, and by the time the Europeans arrived the whole indigenous population was probably less than a million. They traded, farmed and fought, principally along the coasts, instead of the barren interior, where they were eventually forced to live after the successful rebellion of the colonists. (more…)
For seven long years the PSOE has occupied the position of government in Spain. The elections of the rapidly approaching November 20 will, in the view of the analysts, present the Spanish people with an alternative government formed by the PP. The party at present in opposition might win these imminent elections with a majority sufficient properly to govern the country without having recourse to the autonomies – those careless, spendthrift former regions whose reckless extension of debt has done a great deal of damage to the economy: possibly irreparable damage.
The Lower House has just voted (by 90%) to amend the Constitution suitably to prevent such abandoned and thoughtless community spending. Naturally both Cataluña and the Basque Country tried to stop the reform by begging for a referendum (unnecessary) and subsequently leaving the House during the vote, accompanied by the less timid of other deminutive parties. It did not work, and the proposition will now be open for debate in the Upper Chamber. (more…)
While there has always been loud debate about ‘the author of William Shakespeare’s plays’ – the concept is foolish – there is always a doubt in academe not just about possible or mooted authorship, but also about exactly when WS wrote the plays. Dividing the thirty-seven (38?) into separate sections – comedy, tragedy, history and romance – we present here what could be called a concerted opinion on this contentious subject. As to authorship, it hardly matters! All we need to know is that the plays exist; some of them might have been copied from other authors, some were most definitely inspired by others. It really does not matter. The plays exist, and we choose to place them under the authorship of a man called William Shakespeare. Some might have been written by a man called William Wickleigh. We can be certain that neither C. Marlowe nor F. Bacon wrote any of them. We can also be certain that among Shakespeare’s colleagues in the theatre world there were men clever and erudite to have taken the Master’s notes and sketches and formed them into plays. That was how the First Folios were published. The illustration shows Shakespeare around 1609. (more…)
/telegraph.co.uk
Arturo Pérez-Reverte (Cartagena 1951) is a writer in the Hemingway mould whose books I wouldn’t and couldn’t miss for the world. His idea of the perfect holiday is to sail his own twelve metre yacht single-handed around the Mediterranean, putting in at beautiful ports of ill repute and historic interest. I should love to join him but he would be resolute about the ‘single-handed’ part. (more…)
Carlos V / es.wikipedia.org
Charles V (Carlos Quinto) was King of Spain (1516 – 1556) and Holy Roman Emperor (qv. 1519 – 1556). He was the son of Philip I (el Hermoso) and Joanna of Spain, and grandson of Maximilian I. Charles ascended the throne of Spain in 1516, and quickly united it with the Holy Roman Empire when he inherited that as well, in 1519.
It is said that he found himself weighed down by responsibilities in both spheres, and was thus never really able to pay enough attention to national (Spanish) and international (H.R.E) problems. Nonetheless, he achieved a great deal on both fronts. (more…)
‘Nouns of assemblage’ as the earnest Mr Ben Schott has it, are words that indicate an ‘assembly’ of objects, animalspersons etc. They are also called ‘collective nouns’. Here are some examples from Schott, and a few of my own will follow: (more…)
George V / silverinvestor.com
In a previous post, we examined four Hanoverian Georges, one of whom (the III) lost the American colonies for Britain, thus engendering the United States of immortal memory. Here we look at one of the sons of the great womaniser Edward VII, and at his son, immortalised by his courage and his stammer; and his indefatigable lady wife, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, of unreproachable memory.
George V was King of Great Britain and (from 1920) Northern Ireland, dependencies overseas (once known as The Empire), and Emperor of India (1910 – 36). Proud of the independence and intellectual fortitude of the House of Lords, he insisted on a concept unthinkable today – that a general election should precede any reform of them. This insistence he provided during 1911, a period when the Empire was at its zenith, through threatened by black clouds and ill omen.
It was George V who brought together party leaders, at the Buckingham Palace Conference, where Irish home rule was discussed. He accepted with tolerance the socialist Ramsay Macdonald as Prime Minister of a minority government in 1924, and also a national or coalition government in 1924. In both he showed a distinctive element of personal choice which has been much criticised ever since by the Right. His wife was Queen Mary, a royal lady of firm tastes and strength of mind, well able to deal with her husband’s tantrums and salty language – “Bugger Bognor!” were said to be the monarch’s last well-chosen words when he was desperately ill and his wife wanted to take him to recover at this hardly-known Sussex resort. He was the unaffectionate father of Edward VIII, whom they knew as David – the king who gave up the throne because he was not allowed to marry a twice-divorced American adventuress. George V was a Victorian born in 1865; he died, mourned by the British, as a modern constitutional monarch, in 1936. (more…)
George I / fanpop.com
The first George (1660 – 1727) was a German-speaking Elector (royal rank) of Hanover. How did a German come to be invited to be King of England? Not only that, but found a dynasty named after Hanover? George’s mother was Sophia (died 1714), granddaughter of James I, King of England (and VI of Scotland). Sophia’s children were recognised as heirs to the English throne in an Act of Settlement (1701); this Act was specifically designed to keep Roman Catholics off the throne, and the Electors of Hanover were Protestants. James Stuart had been protestant too, though his son Charles I (executed by Parliament) could be described as a kind of Anglo-Catholic, while his brother James II was wholly Catholic, driven off the throne for religious reasons. The wives of all three, James I, Charles I and James II were Catholic. (more…)
Historians are not sure of the date of birth of Hamilcar Barca, general from Carthage, and father of Hannibal and Hasdrubal. We know that he commanded the Carthaginian armies in the ultimate part of the First Punic Wars, and that it was Hamilcar Barca who negotiated the peace of 241 B.C. (more…)