I did not watch Episode 3 of The Sex Researchers last night. Episode 1 pretty much turned me off.

However, someone left a message on my voicemail indicating that there was something in it of possible interest, so I started watching it via 4D on their website.

Well, actually, listening with half an ear for thing of interest to manifest, and doing ( Read more... )

Dept of Clio wants a codfish: English Heritage has criticised a documentary on The History Channel for using its contributions out of context to make “highly speculative conclusions” about King Arthur holding court in Chester:
English Heritage claimed it was under the impression the programme’s main theme was the development of warlord societies in ( Read more... )

The French justice minister, Rachida Dati, has astonished the world by returning to work - looking fabulous - less than a week after the birth of her first child by caesarean. Is she doing a disservice to other women? Or is it no one's business but her own?

I'm not sure what to think about this. Because underlying the entire issue is the subtext of ( Read more... )

Have just been re-reading (along with a swathe of her non-Cold Comfort Farm novels), the biography of Stella Gibbons by her nephew Reggie Oliver, Out of the Woodshed*.

In the most recent episode in Jasper Fforde's saga of Thursday Next, she ends up making a brief visit to Cold Comfort Farm, where she observes that there is, indeed, something nasty ( Read more... )

The problem with putting people into ticky-tacky boxes and assuming that defines them: Sue Tilley, who the media just plain did not get when Lucien Freud's painting of her broke price records;
Tilley's bizarre double life is quite extraordinary. She started working at Camden job centre in her early twenties, made a friend there who took her out ( Read more... )

The waste remains, the waste remains and kills:

Two reviews of Rose George's The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste, which sounds like an excellent study of a neglected subject (except in the form of jokey titles like Flushed with Pride). But shouldn't the Science Editor of the Observer be a bit more aware of the history of ( Read more... )

Theme going on here:

Joan Bakewell explains why we need mature women on our screens:
One entire segment of the public - women over 55 - never see their like on serious programming. They may be part of the content - victims of crime, sufferers from disease or lottery winners, but they are never there as the professional equivalent of older men.

( Read more... )

Dept of You Couldn't Make It Up: A retired teacher who now spends his time campaigning for improved literacy has revealed that he taught classes for 17 years even though he could not read or write.

Evidence from the Berlin Film Festival suggests that Madonna should stick to her last: Madonna reinvents herself as film director (let's all do the ( Read more... )

I can definitely get behind this statement 'the truly cultured are capable of owning thousands of unread books without losing their composure or their desire for more', from Gabriel Zaid's So Many Books!, cited in Lucy Mangan's column, which begins with her New Year Resolution
postponed for several years - namely, not to buy any more books until I' ( Read more... )

A controversial project which has killed hundreds of hedgehogs preying on rare birds in the Hebrides has been abandoned after new evidence showed they could be safely taken off the islands alive.

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What did a librarian think of Underneath the Lintel?;
It's a rather old-fashioned view of libraries. The librarian (played by Richard Schiff, aka Toby ( Read more... )