Past pains follow present pleasures: Tangled-colonial roots

Do you cherish British countryside, the moors and lochs, valleys and mountains, cottages and country houses. Historian and professor of colonialism and heritage at the University of Leicester, Corrine Fowler brings rural life and colonial rule together with transformative results, through ten country walks, roaming the island with varied companions. She connects the Cotswolds to Calcutta. Dolgellau to Virginia and Grasmere to Canton. Empire transformed rural lives for better and for worse, whether in Welsh sheep farms or Cornish copper mines, it offer both opportunity and exploitation. Flower shows how the booming profits of overseas colonial activities, and the select … Continue reading Past pains follow present pleasures: Tangled-colonial roots

Spectacular Opal’s Gene operation begins a new era for deaf

In another trial at Addenbrooke’s NHS hospital, (Cambridge), Opal Sandy (18months) from Oxfordshire,  a girl completely deaf, after she was diagnosed with auditory neuropathy caused by disruption of nerve impulses going from her inner ear to the brain,  can now hear after having world-leading gene therapy.   A working copy of the fault gene that caused it  was delivered by infusion through a tube into her right ear during surgery last September. Within three months, her mum Joy 33, realised Opal could hear clapping. “ I thought it was a fluke, or something caught her eye, but I repeated it … Continue reading Spectacular Opal’s Gene operation begins a new era for deaf

Allergy : Life Transforming breakthrough

Early trial results reveal that eating small amounts of trigger foods could build up immunity in children in a life transforming breakthrough, as five hospitals joined a £2.5million clinical trial set up in memory of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse (15) from Fulham, London, who died in 2016 after suffering from severe allergic reaction to sesame seeds in a Pret baguette. Natasha was travelling with her father and a school friend from London to Nice when she collapsed during a British Airways flight. She bought the sandwich from  Pret a Manger at Heathrow, but a food labelling loophole  left her unaware that the … Continue reading Allergy : Life Transforming breakthrough

TikTok lawsuit to block a US Law rising free speech concerns

As tensions rise between the world’s two biggest economies, the Department of Commerce confirmed it had revoked permissions that had allowed US companies to export certain goods to Chinese technology giant Huawei. The US exports computer chips to Huawei starting in 2019, citing ties to the Chinese military. TikTok has filed a lawsuit to block a US law that would ban the video app in the US unless it is sold by its Chinese parent company, calling the act an “ extraordinary intrusion on free speech rights” of the company and its 170 million American users and followers. They asked … Continue reading TikTok lawsuit to block a US Law rising free speech concerns

Seductive pursuit of beauty myth: Ladies in black knickers, corsets, cosmetics

Are you in front of the dressing table history, a place where your dreams come true, doubts, self-harm and hopes. Who determines which shape is currently “all the rage”? How to custom, colour, class and sex fit into the picture/ Virginia Nicholson explains how advances made by feminism collided with the changing shape of desirability. The pain is Gladys’s botched surgery on her nose, Dorothy, whose skin colour lost her an Oscar, Beccy who took slimming pills and died, and the radioactive corsets. The New Women who discovered freedom by bobbing their hair, the boyish, athletic “ Health and Beauty” … Continue reading Seductive pursuit of beauty myth: Ladies in black knickers, corsets, cosmetics

Facing the ghosts of his childhood

Michael Donor’s Grow Where They Fall,  where the protagonist considers buying a Robert Mapplethrope print, the photograph of a nude Black man, but the sitter’s pose- pulling his knees up in front of his face – is troubling, “ Was a weeping or was this a moment of gentle repose? Wonders Kwame. “Was this clutching and supporting of himself the model demonstrating he needed no one else?   In 2017, Kwame is teaching English at a South London secondary school. His pupils consider him one of the “safe’ ones, and he lives with his university friend Edwin, a generous, willowy, Period Drama … Continue reading Facing the ghosts of his childhood

Decline of ethical standards

Boris Johnson’s premiership was brought down by three Ps” – Paterson, Partygate, and Pincher  whammy scandals involving lobbying by a former minister, Downing Street carousing during Covid lockdowns and a government whip living up or down to his name.  Veteran Kings Counsel, John Bowers, Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford reveals in Downward Spiral, even the most unwilling Brit back to those febrile weeks towards  the end of Johnson’s administration, when he seemed to be puling apart, the conventions of good behaviour that keep the air in Downing Street smelling healthy.  The scandals eroded trust in the British government, from questionable … Continue reading Decline of ethical standards

The Resident: Front of House team really do go above and beyond to help

Trip Advisor, the world’s largest travel guidance platform have been helping people navigate the  best hotel  from Scotland to Cornwall and location, location, is not necessarily the mantra for the best Hotel as a dull London Hotel has been voted the “best Hotel in Britain” without a restaurant, gym, or spa. Hotel preference is a matter of personal taste if Resident, Covent Garden, is the UK’s Best Hotel, Toulson Court in Scarborough is the UK’s best B&B, Brazil’s French-inspired Hotel Collins de France in Gramdao the best hotel in the world according to winners of Trip Advisor’s Annual Traveller’s Choice. … Continue reading The Resident: Front of House team really do go above and beyond to help

I don’t think you know what’s coming – ecstatic misery

A story of live and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends Thomas Hart, a journalist on the Essex Chronicle, and Grace Macauley (17),  small and plump, with skin that went brown by the end of Maym and who is “by nature a thief if she found a thing to be beautiful , but not hers”. worshipers at the Bethesda Baptist chapel in the small fictional Essex town of Aldleigh.  Thomas who is 50 and writes a column for the newspaper on scientific and astronomical topics, which brings him into connection … Continue reading I don’t think you know what’s coming – ecstatic misery

On the Brink of fear & disaster

Philip Notman, an acclaimed medieval history professor whose fondness for Emerson’s scariest quote “ I  am glad to be on the brink of fear”, attends a conference in Bergen, Norway. On his return to London, and to his wife and son, something unexpected and inexplicable happens to him, and he is unable to settle back into his normal life. Seeking answers, he flies to Cadiz to see Inés, a Spanish academic, with whom he shared a connection at the conference, but his journey doesn’t end there. A chance encounter with a wealthy, elderly couple sends him to a house on … Continue reading On the Brink of fear & disaster