Books
Origins In The Two Isles
An examination of the oldest known inhabitants of Britain, the Irish and British.
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'Origins in the Two Isles' is an examination of where the Irish and British people 'come from'. These are the earliest peoples of the islands who can be named. They each spoke a Celtic language derived from Indo-European, itself probably spoken on the steppe-lands of the Pontic-Caspian area somewhere around 4,000 BCE. Archaeology determines that the Indo-European people were herders (of cattle, sheep and goats and horses, the last of which they first domesticated). These herders are a key part of the story. Then there are the farmers. Farming was brought to Europe by colonists from Turkey who moved into Greece and thereafter along both the Mediterranean coast and up into Central Europe. These two groups of farmers reached France at about the same time and the Two Isles were colonised by farmers from France and the Low Countries. These farmers are important to the story too. The part of the past this book tells of inhabits two worlds. First there is the world of words, then secondly the world of things. It is at the point these two worlds intersect we encounter the Irish and the British, where we find them both well-established in the Two Isles at this threshold between Prehistory and History. The book examines this intersection of word and things from two viewpoints. We begin with the farmers and herders in the world of things and work forwards from Old Europe and the steppes. We then move to the world of words and use these words - these legends and myths and also the bare bones of history from the time of Hengist and Horsa and Arthur and Níall of the Nine Hostages - to light our way back to the dingy world of things. The two worlds do approximately meet. By 1000 BCE, archaeology reveals a culture that - even if we cannot prove what language it spoke - is Irish in spirit. The world of words takes us back to about 550 BCE, which is when the islands of 'Hibernia' and 'Albion' are first mentioned. Who then were the British, the Irish? How related to the herders, the farmers? This book is my attempt answer these difficult questions. It is, I would say, more a book of ideas than fact, but even if ideas are vapour stood against solid facts, what are facts without ideas? |
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These 'selected' poems are taken mostly from a sequence of 'collected' books dating from 1982 to 2024, a hard to believe span of 42 years. They are broadly sequential in order, early to late. They take the reader, clacking down the muggy lanes of poetry, through the progress of a life. The poems, in the main, are to my mind modern, but I don't think they will seem modern. They are generally not set and situated in the here and now. But I think they have a modern sensibility. They develop. In the beginning, I found that the quatrain and sonnet were expressive enough, and only more recently have placed more emphasis on versification. As these poems are in chronological sequence, it cannot be helped that the earlier parts of the book show a preference for quatrains and sonnets. I believe the poems form a body of work, each poem an atom in the body helping to build the body. This means the same themes reappear in the poems. Time and time again, for one. The meaning of the moment. Youth, and age, and time, and time, again. I assume, probably wrongly, that poetry can escape time, leak out of it. These are the poems I have marshalled to leak out the wormhole of poetry, if they can. |
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Have you ever heard about a thing so implausible it seemed likely true? A likely tale! So here is a book of likely tales. None of them ever happened, or ever will happen, or are ever likely to happen. They are, after all, likely tales. It is likely that each tale must end, but equally likely that will not be an end of it. A likely tale is not a predictable path. In a likely tale you expect the unexpected yet are even so surprised. That I am afraid is all I can likely tell you about the tales in this book. If you want to know more, you will have to read them. After you have read them though, you will likely know less. For that is the law of likely tales. |
Stahlhelms For Locos
'Tausche Stahlhelm gegen Eisenbahn' by Fritz-Dieter Köpfke, partially translated from the German.
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This is a partial translation of 'Tausche Stahlhelm gegen Eisenbahn' by Fritz-Dieter Köpfke, a friend of my late father. As the author says, it portrays 'a happy childhood in bombed-out Emden', a town to the north-west of Germany. It is a vivid story of surviving in straitened circumstances, of making the best of it, and in the end the innocence of childhood, of living within 'interesting times' and seeing them through childish eyes. The translation consists of about a quarter of the original book. |
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From the introduction :- "This is a very short guide to programming. What is programming? it asks and tries to answer. "Before you can learn to program it is at least useful to know what a program is and what a computer is (aside from being a magic box that as you touch it brings to you bright brave new worlds). This is a programming book for someone who has never programmed but who is at least a little interested in what programming is." |