Obituary of Maureen Colquhoun, Crusading Labour politician who was the first openly gay MP: Among the many issues for which she campaigned were the abolition of women’s prisons, abortion on demand, creche facilities at political conferences and the decriminalisation of prostitution.
She was outed by the Daily Mail gossip columnist and refused to ( Read more... )

Almost as popular as Queen Victoria and the lesbians, the factitious notion that Helen Duncan was prosecuted for being a witch (towards end of TV Reviews). Not sure who I should blame for this: whether Wollaston just didn't take the technicalities on board or whether Tony Robinson should be fingered as the guilty party. (No, I didn't watch the ( Read more... )

A moderately interesting article, Campaign to pardon the last witch, jailed as a threat to Britain at war, rather weakened by a failure to understand what the Witchcraft Act of 1735 actually was - 'a person who pretended to have the power to call up spirits, or foretell the future, or cast spells, or discover the whereabouts of stolen goods was to ( Read more... )

My computer went into a sulk this morning and would not open up properly to let me get online - or rather, I could open my broadband connection but I couldn't open the browser... However it seems okay this evening and I've uninstalled two bits of software I added yesterday which I don't really need and may have been causing problems. And then the ( Read more... )

I've just given up on a fantasy novel (contemporary setting, witches, sorcerors, demons, half-demons and other supernaturals living their covert life alongside life as we know it). Largely because I'm getting terribly fed up with the narrator/heroine: snarky but prone to running in panic-stricken circles as crises proliferate around her does not ( Read more... )

Seen from the taxi on the way to the station on my way home: the Eat and Run Cafe. Even for an establishment associated with a petrol station, this name does rather strike the wrong note, I feel.

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From today's Guardian Weekend Review:

A newly discovered poem by Siegfried Sassoon discussed -
Its gung-ho account of heroism challenges our ( Read more... )