A lot of people come to Hyde Park, after having read Devil in the City, looking for monuments of the World Fair of 1893. I didn't know this but then today we went to hang out with The Lady, or The Republic as it was called, and met people walking around with the book in hand looking for monuments. Pretty cool! I say. I am thinking about putting up an annotated guide to the HP parts for those googling. Like, people should know about the Oriental Institute.
- Jonathan Dresner forwarded English, the Indian Way with a note joking that I was at "the forefront of linguistic creativity, teaching us the words we need to know....". Now that the responsibility is on me, allow me to give you the words that will get integrated in the OED come 2008: Panga; Phada; Poond; Supari; Lafra and others [link via Pak Positive].
- In the Guardian, Nicholas Lezard reviews Michael Quinion's Port Out, Starboard Home and Other Language Myths - a book of etymologies. I am so buying it.
- Richard Holmes' Sahib: The British Soldier in India gets reviewed by Will Cohu in The Telegraph. "Officers found distraction in tiger hunting and pig-sticking; most soldiers stuck to the traditional pastimes of drinking and whoring. In 1833, the 710 men of HM's 26th Foot consumed 5,320 gallons of arrack, 209 of brandy, 249 of gin and more than 500 of beer. By 1899, 361 of every 1,000 men admitted to hospital were suffering from venereal disease".
- Fiction, four years after: Benjamin Kunkel in NYT, Dangerous Characters, has a long review essay about terrorists in American fiction of the ages. James Parker in Boston Globe, Anarchy in the UK, looks at fiction from the across the pond. Joseph Conrad looms large in both.
- Please adjust your doomsday clocks accordingly.
- Click here to learn about Judge Roberts.
- On this particular day, I draw your attention to Mary Ann Weaver's Lost at Tora Bora. Weaver has written a book or two on Pakistan and in this piece, she seems to want to point some fingers....
- I really have, absolutely, no idea what to say about this: There are only two things to be understood about cricket. First, that it is the language of love. Men who are drawn to this game, who understand its linguistic ironies and subtleties of play, who take the time to teach you about technique rather than physique, who enjoy the commitment of a Test, of taking things slow, over days, weeks, sometimes months or years, will be passionate and skilful lovers.
- update: phdcs calls attention to Buckley's England are onto a Shaw Thing. During the summer of 2005, from swish pubs in the Kings Road to my local hardware shop in Harleston, south Norfolk, the conversation has been about cricket. And the weather. Specifically, the effect the weather will have on the cricket. For one glorious summer there has been a cricket narrative sweeping the nation.
COMMENTS
raven | September 11, 2005
Ms. Galvin's a romantic. And a nutjob.
sepoy | September 11, 2005
Ashes going to the, um, head?
moonshine | September 11, 2005
Ms. Galvin gets it.
opip | September 12, 2005
Um, pardon, the 'Dangerous Chars' link is broke. ( br at the front)