The Hall of Fire

I guess none of you know 'The League of Gentlemen' and Papa Lazarou with his YOU'RE MY WIFE NOW.

I remember reading once that the Christian conversion of the pagan Anglo Saxons went so smoothly because they reckoned they were swapping a cold, icy mist ridden Hell for a warmer one. Heaven and Hell are just religious versions of the carrot and stick and aren't to be taken seriously. Look at the m...

I'm not familiar with the Naturalist philosophy. There is something deep in the British psyche that responds to this attitude. The hymn that means the most to us is Abide with me. Churchill's success with the people in 1940 and 1941 was because he recognised and articulated that attitude. Check out ...

Hi nerdanel. This cropped up in the Symposium about a week ago and I posted something which very inadequately agreed with you. Doesn't this create or boost the idea that your racial group is the most important thing about you? I may be white but I don't think that being white is anywhere near the mo...

Beach Boys? A friend of mine went with her mate to a London rock n roll club and started doing her head shaking dance, her being a stand up comic and all. One of the regulars came up to them and said reproachfully, 'A lot of us take this music seriously you know.' 'Don't you think I do too?' says Jo...

WampusCat, now you are no longer passive recipients of fate but have the opportunity to fight. That is a huge psychological advantage. When that fight drains your energy we will try and refresh you.



I still think you have a cheek, posting a picture of the lovely Diane Keaton and claiming it is you.

It sounds like a hoax to me. Sorry.

But those plays!!!! The man was a man for the ages, and it is beyond me why people try to tear him down. No argument from me there. Those texts are astonishing. What is strange is that period is well recorded with an intense competitive vigorous and appreciative literary world and we have these tex...

Nor have I stopped thinking of you.

Yet I believe one of Jonson's plays has an aristocratic character producing literary material under a pseudonym. I can't quote it though. :( I read a book once (John Michel's Who Wrote Shakespeare?) that listed all the main contenders including the Stratford Shakespeare with arguments for and agains...

5 days too late?

Leather bound papyrus?

That's the one. The Shakespeare identification may be questioned but it is the living spit of Jonson who had fought in the Low Countries and may have made a connection with van Mander because of that.

I have always been interested in the portrait by Karel van Mander of two chess players. It never seems to be reproduced. One figure is unmistakeably Ben Jonson, Shakespeare's friend. The other is a young man with Shakespearian features. The portrait was badly restored about a hundred years ago and h...

At least it was a short cane.

Frelga wrote My impression is that the purpose of the immigration laws and their enforcement is not to prevent illegal immigration. It is to keep immigrants terrorized just enough so that their employers can pay them pennies for hard work in dangerous conditions, but not enough that these people lea...

It sounds like the policing equivalent of stealing candy from babies or shooting fish in a barrel. Nice to know that the jails are that empty.

Volsunga older than Arthur? At a rough guess I would have said they were coeval. I remember the Volsunga saga as being in the first book I ever took out from the Children's Library. The black and white drawings were enhanced with red for the copious blood! It would make a great mini series. I'm alwa...

Just to lighten the mood a little.

I remember him telling me that many of the beaches in the area were posted "White Gentiles Only".

A nudist beach I presume?

No, I mean that it is remarkably easy to drum up offence and organised groups do it all the while. There are so many examples I hardly know where to begin but campaigns against Harry Potter or The Last Temptation of Christ will do. Ask any campaigner against these works and you will discover genuine...

If Tolkien saw this episode, of Sam misinterpreting Sméagol's compassion, as significant then given his profound insight then so should we. I had for a while taken the hinge of the story to be Sam's song in the tower of Cirith Ungol. Perhaps Sam's rejection of Sméagol's repentance was the knife edge...