1 July: Charles Laughton

The actor Charles Laughton was born on this date in 1899. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, the son of a hotel keeper. He was expected to go into the family business when he left school, but was drawn to a different career. In 1925 he enrolled at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

2. His first professional appearance on stage was on 28 April 1926 at the Barnes Theatre, as Osip in the comedy The Government Inspector.

3. In 1928, he became the first actor to play Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot in a play called Alibi.

4. He served in the first world war as a private with the Huntingdonshire Cyclist Regiment, and later with 7th Bn. Northamptonshire Regiment in the Western Front. He was injured by mustard gas before the armistice. Raised as a Catholic, he reportedly became an agnostic as a result of his wartime experiences.

5. Laughton's first Hollywood film was The Old Dark House (1932) with Boris Karloff, in which he played a bluff Yorkshire businessman marooned in a creepy Welsh manor during a storm.

6. Although he wasn’t the first British actor to win an Oscar (that was George Arliss), Laughton was the first actor to win an Oscar for a British made film, The Private Life of Henry VIII, in 1933. He remains, as of 2019, the only actor to win an Academy Award for playing Henry VIII.

7. In 1936, he appeared at the Comédie-Française in Paris as Sganarelle in Molière's Le Médecin malgré lui. He was the first English actor to appear at that theatre, where he performed the role in French and received an ovation.

8. He was also a director. While he only directed one film, The Night of the Hunter in 1955, he directed many stage productions.

9. He met his wife, Elsa Lancaster, when they appeared together in a play in 1927. They married two years later and stayed together until he died. There seems to be much speculation as to why they remained child free. He was gay; she couldn’t have children because of an earlier botched abortion; or (shock horror) they simply didn’t want any.

10. Laughton died of cancer in 1962, at the age of 63.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

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30 June: Barium

On 30 June 1808 Humphrey Davy reported to the Royal Society that he had successfully isolated four new metals. One of them was barium. 10 facts about barium:

1. Barium is a soft, silvery metal with the chemical symbol Ba and the atomic number 56.

2. The name derives from a Greek word, "baryta", meaning heavy.

3. Its melting point is 727°C/1341°F/1000 K and its boiling point is 1845°C/3353°F/2118 K.

4. Barium is never found in nature as a free element. It is only found in combination with other elements.

5. The mineral barite (barium sulfate, BaSO4) was first observed by Vincenzo Casciarolo, of Bologna, Italy in the early 1600s. He noticed that certain pebbles would shine at night if heated during the day. These stones became known as Bologna stone. In the 1760s, Carl Scheele worked out that Bologna stone was the sulphate of an unknown element.

6. A mineralogist, Dr William Withering, discovered a mineral in a Lead mine that wasn’t a lead ore. He named it witherite; it was later shown to be barium carbonate, BaCO3.

7. Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution in London produced barium by the electrolysis of barium hydroxide in 1808.

8. All barium compounds are toxic. Barium carbonate has been used as a Rat poison. That said, doctors sometimes give patients barium to eat. Barium sulphate is insoluble and can be safely swallowed, and barium, a heavy element, scatters X-rays. Hence a “barium meal” is a diagnostic tool for digestive disorders. Another is the “barium enema”.

9. Other uses include drilling fluids for oil and gas wells, paint (synthetic barium Copper silicate pigments were used in ancient and imperial China to make the pigments Han Purple and Han Blue) and in glassmaking. Barium nitrate gives Fireworks a Green colour.

10. The barium mineral, benitoite (barium titanium silicate), is a very rare blue fluorescent gemstone. It is the official state gem of California.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

29 June: Mud

Today is International Mud Day. Ten things you never knew about mud:

1. Mud is defined as a liquid or semi-liquid mixture of water and any combination of different kinds of soil (loam, silt, and Clay).

2. Sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone is basically ancient mud which has hardened.

3. In ancient times, people built houses out of mud, or turned the stuff into bricks. The Egyptians would place a mixture of mud and straw into a rectangular mould and leave it to dry in the sun.

4. Worms, Frogs, Snails, clams, and Crayfish are among the animals which make their homes in mud.

5. Bigger animals like Hippopotamuses, Pigs, Rhinoceros, water buffalo and Elephants use it as sunscreen. They bathe in mud and let it dry on their skin.

6. Mississippi mud pie is a chocolate based dessert pie, and “mud” is generally a chocolate or cornstarch-based sludge popular with children. Neither contain any actual mud.

7. Children like to play in mud, which may be a nightmare for parents but it’s actually quite beneficial. Mycobacterium vaccae found in mud increase human serotonin levels, which is why kids enjoy playing in it so much. Meanwhile playing in mud can strengthen a child’s immune system.

8. Some American towns, including Albuquerque and Gillette, Wyoming, hold a yearly event in which participants play volleyball in a giant mud pit.

9. The word mud has existed in the English language since the 1400s. While on the subject of words, “bedrabble” means to make dirty with rain or mud; “belute” means to splatter with mud; daggle means to drag in mud; and “plodge” means to wade through mud.

10. The phrase “as clear as mud” dates back to 1804, and the toast “Here’s mud in your eye” first appeared in 1927.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

28 June: John Wesley

John Wesley, English evangelist who founded the Methodist societies was born on this date in 1703. Here are some things you might not know about him:

1. His mother, Susannah, was the youngest of 25 children. She went on to have 19 children of her own, of which John was the 15^th. The propensity to have incredibly large families wasn’t inherited by John, however, who didn’t have any children at all.

2. While he favoured celibacy for the clergy, he did fall in love with a woman called Sophy while on a missionary journey to America but she married someone else. Wesley felt she wasn’t as devout as a result and even refused to allow her to take communion. He did finally marry at the age of 48. His wife was a widow called Mary Vazeille who had four children. She and John had no children together, and she eventually left him because he spent too much time on the growing Methodist movement.

3. John Wesley believed that everyone should have access to God’s word and although a loyal Anglican was sometimes banned from preaching in the Church of England because of his views. He began to preach to ordinary people out in the open.

4. In the course of his lifetime, Wesley is said to have travelled 250,000 miles on horseback, which is ten times the circumference of the Earth. He is said to have preached 40,000 sermons.

5. Contemporary descriptions say that he was "rather under the medium height, well proportioned, strong, with a bright eye, a clear complexion, and a saintly, intellectual face".

6. At the age of six, he almost died when the family home, The Old Rectory in Epworth, caught Fire. This might have been arson by opponents of John’s father Samuel, also a clergyman. John thankfully escaped through a first floor Window and his mother sad that he was "a brand plucked from the burning". The house was rebuilt and remained the family home until 1735. The family believed that the house was haunted by a ghost called 'Old Jeffery'.

7. Wesley did at times question his faith and his fitness to be a preacher. Another preacher named Peter Boehler advised Wesley to "preach faith until you have it".

8. Wesley wrote about 400 books and pamphlets. As you’d expect, many of them were about theology, but not all of them. He also wrote about Music, marriage, abolitionism, politics and medicine. Believing that God cared as much about a person’s physical life as their spiritual one, he wrote a medical text for ordinary people called Primitive Physick. It included a number of home remedies and was widely read. His advice included powdered toad pills for asthma and the remedy for a stomach ache was to hold a puppy against the stomach. Though arguably cuddling puppies is bound to make people feel better!

9. The phrase “agree to disagree” is attributed to John Wesley. He and another clergyman called George Whitefield had very different theological opinions. In a memorial sermon for Whitfield, Wesley said, “There are many doctrines of a less essential nature. ... In these, we may think and let think; we may agree to disagree.”

10. Wesley was a vegetarian and didn’t drink Wine for health reasons.

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

27 June: Handshakes

Today is National Handshake Day in 2024. 10 things you might not know about handshakes:

1. Handshakes go back a long way. One of the earliest known depictions of a handshake is an ancient Assyrian relief dating to the 9th century BC. It shows the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III shaking the hand of the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi I to seal an alliance.

2. Images of people shaking hands are fairly common in Ancient Greek art. Common enough that there’s even a technical name for it in the fine art world: dexiosis. Homer described handshakes several times in his “Iliad” and “Odyssey,” most often in relation to pledges and displays of trust.

3. Even Shakespeare mentions a handshake in As You Like It: two characters “shook hands and swore brothers.”

4. That said, historians have noted that a handshake as a greeting doesn’t appear until the mid-19th century, and that it was seen then as a slightly improper gesture which should be kept strictly between good friends. According to an article from 1884, people in France intensely disliked the custom, to the extent that a society was formed to abolish ‘le shake-hands’ which they saw as a vulgar English innovation.

5. It’s thought that the handshake began in ancient history as a way for two people to demonstrate that they weren’t about to kill each other. Typically, the right hand is offered, the hand which would most often be used to hold a weapon. The up and down movement of the handshake is thought to be an extra test, because it would dislodge any daggers concealed up sleeves.

6. When people shake hands to seal an agreement, it isn’t fully binding until the hands are parted.

7. At time of writing the Guinness World Records website says that the longest handshake record is held by Claes Blixt and Dennis Oscarsson from Sweden who shook hands for 27 hours in April 2023. However, it seems this record is frequently broken, and the comments suggested there was already a 43 hour handshake and the site had not yet updated the entry.

8. President Theodore Roosevelt set a record when he shook hands with 8,510 people at a White House reception on January 1, 1907. Mayor Joseph Lazarow broke that when he shook hands with 11,000 in a day as part of a publicity stunt in 1977. The current record, though, belongs to Lance Dowson shook 12,500 individuals' hands in 10+1⁄2 hours, in Wrexham, N. Wales in 1963.

9. An American study carried out in Washington in 2000 found that a person’s handshake is consistent over time and that it’s possible to relate it to personality traits. Firm handshakes were associated with extroversion and men had firmer handshakes than women.

10. Secret handshakes, by which people in a society or group can recognise one another, may be as old as the handshake itself. Sports teams, fraternities and even families might have a particular secret handshake that they use. The most famous group to use one is the Freemasons. In fact, the Freemasons have more than one. They actually have about a dozen, so that each rank within the organisation has a specific handshake so Masons can not only tell that the person they’re pressing palms with is a Mason, but also what rank they are.

New!!!

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

26 June: Canoes

Today is National Canoe Day. 10 things you didn’t know about canoes:

1. A canoe is defined as a lightweight narrow Water vessel, usually pointed at both ends, propelled by one or more paddlers facing the direction of travel and using paddles.

2. The word canoe is said by some to be derived from the african word kenu which means “dugout”. Others claim the word is of Arawak origin.

3. The earliest known canoe artifact was found in the Netherlands. It is called the Pesse Canoe and was carbon dated to between 8040 and 7510 BC.

4. The sport of canoeing first appeared in the Paris Olympic Games in 1924. The sport’s Paralympic debut was at Rio in 2016.

5. The average speed of a canoe is 3 mph.

6. From 1935 to 1986 the Canadian silver dollar depicted a canoe with the Northern Lights in the background.

7. The Canadian Slavey and Chipewyan peoples believe that when a person dies, their soul boards a stone canoe which is paddled slowly across a large lake. An evil soul will sink and be lost in the watery depths, but a good soul makes it across to the other side.

8. The Māori people arrived in New Zealand from Polynesia in canoes. They arrived in several waves and which canoe one’s ancestors arrived in is important for tribal identity.

9. In the early 1900s there were canoes especially made for courting couples. They were lined with mahogany and equipped with phonographs, rugs, and a chair for the woman. Making use of such a vessel was sometimes referred to as “canoedling”.

10. A slight bend in the paddle is a design feature in sporting canoes. This is thanks to Eugene Jensen, a Minneapolis-based marathon canoer, won the 450-mile Bemidji-to-Minneapolis endurance test four times in the 1970s. He noticed, during one race, that a slight bend in the shaft of the paddle improved his speed.

New!!!

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

25 June; Goat's cheese

Today is Goat’s Cheese Day. 10 things you might not know about goat’s cheese:

1. Goats were one of the earliest animals to be domesticated. Goat’s cheese has been made since at least 5,000 BC.

2. It possibly began when nomadic people carried goat’s milk with them in pouches made from animal stomachs. When the Milk curdled they discovered that the solidified milk was good to eat.

3. In Ancient Egypt, only priests knew how to make cheese from goat’s milk. Goat’s cheese has been found in Egyptian tombs dating back 3,000 years.

4. The Romans ate it raw or cooked with olive oil and white wine.

5. Goat’s milk has higher proportions of some fatty acids, such as caproic and caprylic, which contribute to the characteristic taste of the Cheese. These fatty acids take their name from the Latin for 'goat', capra. Goat’s cheese is also rich in Calcium, protein, and vitamin A.

6. It contains less lactose than cheese made from cow’s milk. Hence it is more easily digestible and some lactose intolerant people can therefore tolerate goat’s cheese better.

7. Common goat breeds used for cheese production include Alpine, Saanen, and Toggenburg.

8. Yagi cheese is a goat’s cheese made in Japan. Yagi is the Japanese word for goat.

9. Fresh goat’s cheese is soft, mild, and creamy, while aged goat’s cheese develops a stronger, more complex flavour as it matures.

10. In the Middle Ages, goat’s cheese was even used as currency by pilgrims going to Santiago de Compostela.

New!!!

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

24 June: Manila

On this date in 1571 Miguel Lopez de Lagazpi founded Manila, the capital of the Philippines.

1. Manila is located on the biggest island of the Philippines, Luzon. on the eastern shore of Manila Bay. The Pasig River runs through the city.

2. The name derives from the phrase may-nilà, meaning "where indigo is found", because of the indigo-yielding plants that grow in the area.

3. Manila is one of the most densely populated cities in the world, with over 1.7 million people in just 16.56 square miles.

4. The city is home to the oldest university in Asia. The University of Santo Tomas in Manila was founded in 1611.

5. It also has the oldest Chinatown in the world, Binondo, established in 1521.

6. A way of getting around in Manila is the jeepney. These are colourful vehicles adapted from World War II US army jeeps.

7. The design for the city was based on the City Beautiful movement. American architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham was commissioned to design the new capital in 1905.

8. There’s a park in the centre of the city called Rizal Park, which is the largest urban park in Asia. It commemorates Jose Rizal, a Philippine national hero. The flagpole in the park serves as a Kilometer Zero marker, a starting reference for every Philippine highway, route, or location.

9. On January 9 each year the city hosts the procession of the Feast of the Black Nazarene.

10. The largest banknote in the world was issued by the Central Bank of the Philippines in Manila in 1998. The 100,000 peso bill was released to celebrate the 100 years of Philippine independence from Spanish colonial rule, and measures 8.5”x 14”.

New!!!

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

23 June: Forrest Gump

On this date in 1994 the film Forrest Gump was released in LA. 10 things you might not know:

1. The film Forrest Gump is based on a novel by Winston Groom, published in 1986. It wasn’t a best seller until after the film came out. In 1995 Groom wrote a sequel, Gump & Co. In the book, Forrest goes to space, runs for the US senate and plays in a Chess tournament.

2. The original choice to play Forrest was John Travolta, who turned it down and later said doing so had been a big mistake. Others considered for the role were Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, John Goodman and Matthew Broderick. Jodie Foster, Nicole Kidman, and Demi Moore all turned down the role of Jenny Curran.

3. All 30 songs on the official soundtrack are by American artists. This was on purpose, as director Robert Zemeckis strongly believed Forrest Gump would only ever buy American music.

4. Scenes in both the Gump family home and in Vietnam were filmed in South Carolina.

5. In the scene where Forrest meets Elvis, although Elvis is portrayed by Peter Dobson, the voice belongs to Kurt Russell, who wasn’t credited.

6. Industrial Light & Magic were responsible for the film's visual effects, and were able to use CGI to insert Forrest into archive footage of historical people and shake hands with them. Hanks was shot against a blue screen with reference markers so that he could line up with them. Voice actors provided the dialogue.

7. Gary Sinese had blue fabric wrapped around his legs so they could be digitally removed for scenes after he lost them. In other scenes he used a wheelchair with a platform underneath to hide his legs. Using it was so uncomfortable for the actor that he could only film in it for ten minutes at a time.

8. The running scene was inspired by Louis Michael Figueroa, aged 16, who ran from New Jersey to San Francisco for the American Cancer Society in 1982. Tom Hanks’s younger brother Jim was the acting double for those scenes.

9. Each time Forrest’s age advances in the film, in the first scene for that age, he is wearing a Blue plaid shirt.

10. During the ping-pong matches, there was no ball; it was entirely CGI, animated to meet the actors' paddles.

New!!!

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle

22 June: Vancouver

Today is the birth date of George Vancouver, the explorer who carried out surveys of North America and after whom Vancouver, British Columbia is named. He was born in 1757. 10 things you might not know about Vancouver:

1. It wasn’t always called Vancouver. The original name was Granville and the settlement had sprung up around a saloon. This area of the city is now known as Gastown, a nod to the owner of the bar, one Captain John Deighton, also known as “Gassy Jack” because he talked too much. In 1886 Granville was incorporated as the City of Vancouver.

2. The Port of Vancouver is the largest port in Canada and has the fourth largest cruise ship terminal in the world. Most of the cruise liners departing from there are going to Alaska.

3. Vancouver has the world’s longest swimming pool. It’s a saltwater pool called Kits Pool and at 137.5 meters (451 feet) it is the size of three Olympic pools.

4. It also has the world’s narrowest building, the Sam Kee Building, which is only six feet wide.

5. And then there is the world’s largest tin soldier in the Vancouver Metropolitan area. It is 9.75 metres tall and weighs 4540 kilograms.

6. Vancouver has more parks than any other city in the world. The largest of them is Stanley Park which takes up 1001 acres, making it 10% larger than New York City’s Central Park. All the grey Squirrels found in the park are descendants of eight pairs of grey squirrels Vancouver was given by New York City in 1909.

7. The eco-activist group Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver 1971.

8. The cosmetic treatment Botox was invented in Vancouver.

9. Vancouver is twinned with Odessa, Ukraine; Yokohama, Japan; Edinburgh, Scotland; Guangzhou, China and Los Angeles, USA.

10. Vancouver has the only working wind turbine in the world that has a viewing platform, called “The Eye of The Wind” on top of Grouse Mountain.

New!!!

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

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21 June: Suffolk Day

Today is Suffolk Day. 10 things you might not know about the English county of Suffolk:

1. Suffolk is a ceremonial county in the East of England. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county town.

2. The name comes from a division of ancient inhabitants into “North folk” (Norfolk) and “South folk” (Suffolk)

3. The county is home to the smallest pub in the world, The Nutshell, in Bury St Edmunds. It is a former fruit shop, 15ft by 7ft, and opened in 1867.

4. It’s also where the most easterly point in the UK is located: Ness Point, in Lowestoft.

5. There is a breed of Horses unique to Suffolk. They are called the Suffolk Punch. They are in danger of going extinct, and are cared for by the Suffolk Punch Trust.

6. Villages and towns here are pink-washed halls and cottages, which has given rise to a shade of paint called “Suffolk Pink”. While a village called Woolpit used to be famous for making white bricks which were exported all over the world.

7. Bawdsey is the location of the first operational radar station in the world, developed in secret there in the run up to WW2.

8. Along with Cheshire, Suffolk has one of the highest densities of ponds in the UK.

9. The nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star was written in Shilling Street, Lavenham in 1806. The poet Jane Taylor was living there at the time.

10. Famous people from Suffolk include: author George Orwell, painters John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough, DJ John Peel, TV cook Delia Smith, Actors Bob Hoskins, June Brown and Ralph Fiennes, Comedian Griff Rhys Jones, composer Benjamin Britten and singer Ed Sheeran.

New!!!

The first in a new series! It has invading aliens, gladiator-style contests, rivalry and romance.

The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.

Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.

Get it in paperback

Get it for your kindle