April 30, 2021
by Graham
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This is the Scots Gaelic name for Scotland, and has been chosen by Alex Salmond, former First Minister of Scotland for the Scottish National Party, as the name of his new party, set up in opposition to the SNP after … Continue reading
April 4, 2021
by Graham
4 Comments
I have always thought the Radio 4 programme The Reunion as being reliable and well presented. When Sue MacGregor was leading it, I never had any quibbles with it, but this morning, the programme about the discovery of Richard III’s … Continue reading
March 6, 2021
by Graham
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In the interview that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have given to Oprah Winfrey, the Duchess implied that Buckingham Palace (not mentioning individual names) had been “perpetuating falsehoods about us”. When I heard the clip for the first time, … Continue reading
January 19, 2021
by Graham
4 Comments
Serendipitously, not long after writing my last post, I watched a TV programme called “The Queen: in her own words“, which, as it said on the tin, included many examples of her speaking, the extracts used coming from the whole … Continue reading
November 28, 2020
by Graham
5 Comments
It’s interesting to read that the French are adding “accent discrimination” to their equality laws. In Britain, we seem to be getting past the stage of despising people for the way they speak. When I joined the BBC in 1979, … Continue reading
September 22, 2020
by Graham
3 Comments
We’re all accustomed to the many ways that the letter combination ‘ough’ is pronounced in English, depending on the word: cough, rough, though, through, thought, Slough, and the whimsical hiccough. But the letters -gh- by themselves are only pronounced in … Continue reading
August 12, 2020
by Graham
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I went to my GP surgery this morning for a standard blood test, but because of the current pandemic, there was a notice stuck to the inside of the door’s window giving me instructions on how to behave. As I … Continue reading
August 5, 2020
by Graham
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I’m reading “Shaw’s Music” (i.e. George Bernard Shaw’s music criticism) at the moment (three volumes, each of nearly 1000 pages), and came across a comment he made in 1891 that he could easily have written yesterday. “There is nothing that … Continue reading
June 3, 2020
by Graham
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This word has achieved a lot of prominence in the last three months, but it is being used in a way that the Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t – yet – recognise. Shield as a verb in English goes back a … Continue reading
May 11, 2020
by Graham
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My friend Alec is taking the opportunity of being locked down to catch up on some reading he’d been intending to get round to for the last fifty or so years, and has reached D H Lawrence. In “Lost Girls”, … Continue reading