Good Book about Up North
Thanks to Siegfried who tagged me to do this:
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages
It is Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North by Stuart Maconie, which I'm currently reading.
2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 5th sentence:
Well, I'm not sure really - the page starts halfway through a sentence but I'm going with this one:
"This led James Wroe of the Manchester Observer to describe the events with bitter humour as the Peterloo Massacre".
3. Post the next 3 sentences:
He was later arrested for having the temerity to report the events, another echo of Tiananmen. But there were many journalists present and the events immediately found their way into the press. Shelley wrote the impassioned and angry poem The Masque of Anarchy as a response.
4. Forget what you're supposed to do next, which is tag 5 people, and start going on about other things in a slightly anarchic way: (oh, okay, that's just me).
I remember learning about the Peterloo Massacre in A-level history. On 16 August 1819, - a hundred and sixty-one years to the day before the day that I got married, incidentally - a big crowd of 80,000 had come to Peterloo to listen to the orator Henry Hunt. Sixty yeoman cavalrymen charged at the crowd, for no good reason as it was a peaceful demonstration, and many people were killed - and far many more were injured. Many of those present had fought at Waterloo so the Peterloo name made a good parallel.
One of those inglorious episodes in British history that we tend not to remember.
Pies and Prejudice is excellent. I've heard Stuart Maconie on the radio but didn't know that he is such a good writer: The Times's description of him on the cover as "effortlessly articulate" is entirely accurate. He was born in Lancashire and, in this book, sets off on a Bill Bryson-like tour of the North of England, with witty, well-written and interesting results. I haven't finished reading it yet and am enjoying every page.
But I can't tag people: I would feel as though I were pressurising them to do something. And yet I was perfectly happy when Siegfried tagged me. So there you have it: a bit of history, a good book and an insight into Daphne's ground-level over-reticence - which has oft been pointed out to me - all in one blog post.
1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 (or more) pages
It is Pies and Prejudice: In Search of the North by Stuart Maconie, which I'm currently reading.
2. Open the book to page 123 and find the 5th sentence:
Well, I'm not sure really - the page starts halfway through a sentence but I'm going with this one:
"This led James Wroe of the Manchester Observer to describe the events with bitter humour as the Peterloo Massacre".
3. Post the next 3 sentences:
He was later arrested for having the temerity to report the events, another echo of Tiananmen. But there were many journalists present and the events immediately found their way into the press. Shelley wrote the impassioned and angry poem The Masque of Anarchy as a response.
4. Forget what you're supposed to do next, which is tag 5 people, and start going on about other things in a slightly anarchic way: (oh, okay, that's just me).
I remember learning about the Peterloo Massacre in A-level history. On 16 August 1819, - a hundred and sixty-one years to the day before the day that I got married, incidentally - a big crowd of 80,000 had come to Peterloo to listen to the orator Henry Hunt. Sixty yeoman cavalrymen charged at the crowd, for no good reason as it was a peaceful demonstration, and many people were killed - and far many more were injured. Many of those present had fought at Waterloo so the Peterloo name made a good parallel.
One of those inglorious episodes in British history that we tend not to remember.
Pies and Prejudice is excellent. I've heard Stuart Maconie on the radio but didn't know that he is such a good writer: The Times's description of him on the cover as "effortlessly articulate" is entirely accurate. He was born in Lancashire and, in this book, sets off on a Bill Bryson-like tour of the North of England, with witty, well-written and interesting results. I haven't finished reading it yet and am enjoying every page.
But I can't tag people: I would feel as though I were pressurising them to do something. And yet I was perfectly happy when Siegfried tagged me. So there you have it: a bit of history, a good book and an insight into Daphne's ground-level over-reticence - which has oft been pointed out to me - all in one blog post.
posted by Daphne at 7:15 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home