Month: January 2026

Entertainment

Black Adder & Blackadder

There were four Seasons of six episodes each in the ‘Black Adder’ or ‘Blackadder’ TV comedy series. They were:- The Black Adder (1983) […]

There were four Seasons of six episodes each in the ‘Black Adder’ or ‘Blackadder’ TV comedy series. They were:-

The Black Adder (1983) – set in the late 1400s after Black Adder has mistakenly beheaded his uncle the King
Blackadder II (1986) – set in the 1500s with Blackadder in the service of the Queen
Black Adder The Third (1987) – set in the late 1700s/early 1800s in the Prince Regent’s apartments
Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) – set in 1917 WW1 trenches

The first was written by Richard Curtis (1956-) and the lead actor, Rowan Atkinson (1955-), the other three by Curtis and Ben Elton (1959-). They include, naturally, comic exaggerations of historical record, e.g. William Pitt the Younger depicted as a teenaged Prime Minister!

The main character who, after season 1, was a clever, conniving schemer, is descended from the previous Blackadders. Indeed several characters appear in each time period, including the dim-witted servant, Baldrick, played by Tony Robinson (1946-), who always has “a cunning plan” which turns out to be ridiculous.

Seasons 2 and 3 were works of comic genius but it was Season 4’s final, poignant episode which drew the highest viewing figures of 10.2 million. Captain Blackadder’s attempts to abscond are in vain as his unit is commanded to ‘go over the top’.

(Top image from Blackadder II: S L.a.g.h.a.r.i at Flickr.com/CC BY 2.0)

13/01/2026
3 min
9 hours
227 words

English language

Malapropisms and Spoonerisms

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) had Irish lineage and was an MP at Westminster for 32 years, lending him ample experience of the […]

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) had Irish lineage and was an MP at Westminster for 32 years, lending him ample experience of the clever, comedic and nonsensical use of the English language. His own wit and articulacy are evident in his writings, which include his first play, ‘The Rivals’ (1775).

One of the characters, Mrs Malaprop (deriving from the French mal-à-propos, meaning inappropriate), likes long words but gets them confused, e.g. “… but he can tell you the perpendiculars” – she means ‘particulars’, and “… to illiterate him quite from your memory” – she means ‘obliterate’.

Mixing up similar-sounding words is something people normally avoid by substituting simpler vocabulary if they are not sure, but when it is done in this forthright manner, it is called a malapropism in honour of Sheridan’s comic exposure of the phenomenon.

Another playful word-twist was pinpointed when William Archibald Spooner (1844-1930) of London, teaching at Oxford University, was said to absent-mindedly switch the first letters or syllables of adjacent words, e.g. “… the weight of rages…” instead of “… the rate of wages…” or even the complete words, e.g. saying “Dr. Friend’s child” instead of “Dr Childe’s friend” . Spooner, once aware of this quirk, apparently began to speak more slowly in an effort to self-edit.

(Images LtoR: Sheridan at picryl.com / Public domain, Spooner at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

09/01/2026
3 min
5 days
223 words

Discoveries

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The cuneiform writing system of the ancient Middle Eastern nations first began to be deciphered in the 18th and early 19th centuries. […]

The cuneiform writing system of the ancient Middle Eastern nations first began to be deciphered in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Sir Henry Rawlinson (1810-95) from Oxfordshire was one of the pioneers of this, and he spotted an engraving in three languages, one of which, Old Persian, had already been adequately translated, and from that he was able to decipher the Babylonian and Assyrian versions by 1850.

Meanwhile, Sir Austen Layard (1817-94) discovered the buried cities of Nimrud and Nineveh in Iraq and sent thousands of clay tablets back to the British Museum in 1850 and 1853, which prompted thousands more to be sold to them until they had a collection of some 85,000. They were inscribed with the languages Rawlinson had found.

George Smith (1840-76) grew up near the Museum and was fascinated by the inscriptions and explanatory publications of Rawlinson and Layard. In 1866 he was employed as the Museum’s first salaried Assyriologist and by 1872 had made astounding progress. He had discovered the oldest existing literary work, ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh‘, judged to be more than 4,000 years old. It recounts the king’s exploits and, Smith joyously saw, the same Flood story as described in Genesis. Smith died of dysentery on a subsequent journey to Nineveh.

(Images LtoR: George Smith by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, one of the 12 Epic tablets by Zunkir – both at Wikimedia Commons, both CC BY-SA 4.0)

02/01/2026
3 min
2 weeks
228 words

Quoting Neil Oliver...

I love Britain more than anywhere else in the world. With all my heart I declare that those of us born here, or who have made a home here by choice, are the luckiest, most blessed of all people. I am British. I will always be British.