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James MacPherson, Scottish Poet and Translator (or Fraud)
There’s a thin line between lying and creating, sometimes. Is the forger who creates new paintings in the style of the old masters any less of an artist than they were? His work is skillful, his subjects original, though he may match their…
Lady Jane Wilde (alias Speranza), Writer
“Great people” rarely come from a vacuum. Though genius can blossom on the hardest ground, it most often finds root on the fertile soil of supportive and almost-equally talented family members. Sadly however, the bright light of genius…
Samuel Pratt aka Courtney Melmoth, Playwright and Writer
Samuel Jackson Pratt was born on Christmas Day 1749 in the historic English town of St Ives. At the time it was the last stop before London for many travellers, as well as being a nexus for canal traffic to move onland for transportation to…
Why Top Gun: Maverick can only make sense in Trump’s America
Captain Bauer: Fudge is not a person. He wasn’t in the war.
Jimmy McGill: Well, neither was Tom Cruise and look what Top Gun did for you.
- Better Call Saul, Season 3, Episode 1, Mabel
It was good news when Val Kilmer donned an Ice Man…
Delia Bacon, Writer and Shakespeare Theorist
Delia Bacon was born in a log cabin in Ohio in the February of 1811. Her father David was a Congregationalist minister who had been born in Connecticut forty years earlier. In 1801 he had tried to establish a mission in Detroit, but it had…
Punch-up in a Civil War | Mike McTigue versus the Battling Siki
The county of Clare has produced many fine sportspeople over the years including a World Light Heavyweight champion in the form of Mike McTigue. The Kilnamona native won his world title in an incredible bout against an opponent from Senegal…
William Randolph Hearst, the Original Media Mogul
William Randolph Hearst was born in San Francisco in 1863. His father George was a former Missouri farmer who had come to California for the gold rush, but had been smart enough to see the money to be made in quartz and silver mining as…
Murder on Music Row | The Deaths of David Akeman and James Phillip Widener
In November 1973 country music was rocked by the murders of two of its stars in Nashville. Banjo supremo David Akeman and guitar slinger James Phillip Widener died in similar violent circumstances just weeks apart and it put a whole new…
Algernon Swinburne, Dissolute Poet
Algernon Charles Swinburne was born in a suburb of London in April 1837, a few months before Victoria took the throne. One of his grandfathers was an earl, and another was a baronet, his father was a Captain in the Royal Navy…
Lawless, Frank and Free Usage | The Many Lives of Robin Hood
It was the 1960s grainy, black and white television series ‘what done it’ for me and I have been smitten ever since.
Robin Hood, Robin Hood
Riding through the glen.
Robin Hood, Robin Hood
With his band of men.
Feared by the bad…