1 August: Lughnasadh

Happy Lughnasadh! 10 things you might not know about this festival:

1. What is it? It’s a Gaelic festival which marks the beginning of the harvest season. It’s the first of two festivals connected to the harvest, the other being Alban Elfed, celebrated at the Autumn Equinox.

2. Lughnasadh is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals, along with Samhain, Imbolc and Beltane.

3. It’s also sometimes known as Lammas, from the old-anglosaxon “hlaef-mass” meaning loaf mass, mass where the first loaf of Bread is consecrated.

4. Lughnasadh is named for the god Lugh, patron of scholars, craftsmen, warriors and magicians. Lugh is also known as Lugh Samildánach (the Many Skilled) and Lugh Lámhfada (Lugh with the Long Arm).

5. In Welsh, the day is known as Calan Awst, originally a Latin term, meaning the Calends of August.

6. It is seen as one of the two most auspicious times for handfasting, the other being Beltane.

7. The celebration of Lughnasadh includes the ritual cutting of the first grain and an offering, possibly the making of a first meal from it and the ritual eating of it, and dancing. In olden days a bull might be sacrificed. Often the celebrations would take place on top of a hll and in some places there was a tradition of climbing hills or mountains. Some of the latter survive today although they are now seen as pilgrimages. The best known is the Reek Sunday pilgrimage to the top of Croagh Patrick in Ireland on the last Sunday in July.

8. It’s a time of joy and celebration but there’s an undercurrent of tension because not all the harvest was in yet, and there could still be floods that would wash most of it away.

9. While generally deemed to be on the 1^st of August, if you want to celebrate as the Celts did, you should hold your celebrations on the evening of 31 July or on the nearest full moon.

10. Some Wiccans mark the holiday by baking a figure of the "corn god" in bread, and then symbolically sacrificing and eating it.

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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31 July: The Lunar Rover

On this date in 1971 Dave Scott became first person to drive a car on the Moon. 10 things you might not know about the Moon Buggy:

1. During the Apollo era of lunar exploration in the late 1960’s astronauts discovered that hiking around the Moon was more tiring and disorienting than they expected. Scientists on Earth wanted them to retrieve hundreds of pounds of moon rocks from geological sites that were very far from the Lunar Module. Fortunately, NASA engineers had a solution. They designed a lightweight, space-age dune buggy that could fold up inside the tight confines of the Lunar Module.

2. Werner Von Braun, former Nazi, and the guy behind most of the US’ rocket design programme, initially imagined a tractor trailer sized rover. That plan evolved into a pressurised cabin style vehicle that would be lifted to the Moon on its own payload-only Saturn V before budget and other considerations brought us to the design we now know.

3. The Moon-buggy was a one horse power vehicle. It had four .25-horsepower motors, one on each of the four wheels.

4. There were three moon-buggies that drove on the Moon during Apollo 15, 16 and 17. One extra was built for parts.

5. The moon-buggies and the test models were built by Boeing at a cost of $38,000,000. In today’s dollars that equates to roughly $285 million.

6. The total distance travelled by all three LRVs was about 56 miles.

7. The vital statistics of a moon buggy are as follows: Length 10 ft (3.0 m) Height 3.6 feet (1.1 m) weight 460 pounds (210 kg) on Earth 76 pounds (34 kg) on the Moon. It could carry 970 pounds (440 kg), including two astronauts, equipment, and cargo such as lunar samples.

8. It was designed for a top speed of 6 miles per hour (9.7 km/h), although it achieved a top speed of 11.2 miles per hour (18.0 km/h) during its last mission, Apollo 17.

9. The three Lunar rovers were left behind on the Moon, and so are still up there.

10. An operational constraint was that the astronauts had to be able to walk back to the Lunar Module if the LRV broke down. This was called the "Walkback Limit". Therefore, they would go to the farthest point they could and work their way back to minimise the amount of walking they’d have to do. This constraint was relaxed during Apollo 17, as the LRV and the space suits had proved reliable.

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

30 July: La Marseillaise

Today is Marseillaise Day in France. The day honours the National Anthem of France, the Marseillaise, on the anniversary of the day in 1792 when it was first sung in Paris (by 500 men from Marseilles).

10 things you might not know about La Marseillaise, the French national anthem:

1. It was written on 24 April 1792 by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle, a captain of the engineers and amateur musician. He was staying in Strasbourg at the time. War had broken out between France and Austria and P.F. Dietrich, the mayor of Strasbourg, declared that a song was needed "that will rally our soldiers from all over to defend their homeland that is under threat".

2. His song was called “Chant de guerre de l’armée du Rhin” (“War Song of the Army of the Rhine”), but after it became popular among volunteer army units from Marseilles it became known as “La Marseillaise”.

3. It was first adopted as the French national anthem in a decree passed on July 14, 1795.

4. Napoleon and Louis XVIII both banned it because of its revolutionary lyrics. in 1879, it was restored as France's national anthem, and has remained so ever since.

5. Rouget de Lisle wrote six verses of which just the first and last are generally sung on official occasions. Later on a seventh verse was added especially for children. This might have been because some of the lyrics are quite violent, referring to throats being torn out and mothers’ breasts being torn apart.

6. In more peaceful times, President Valery Giscard d'Estaing once said it was somewhat inappropriate to sing a song about killing Prussians when the German Chancellor was in attendance. However, attempts to change the words have never been successful.

7. The Russians used the song as an anthem as well during the 18^th century. After the February Revolution of 1917, it was the semi-official national anthem of the new Russian republic.

8. Tchaikovsky uses it in his 1812 Overture to represent the invading French Army under Napoleon. It is drowned out by cannon fire, symbolising the Russian victory at the Battle of Borodino.

9. During World War I, bandleader James Reese Europe played a Jazz version.

10. The opening bars of "La Marseillaise" form the introduction to The Beatles song All You Need is Love.

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 July: Benito Mussolini

This date in 1883 saw the birth of Benito Mussolini, Italian Dictator during the second world war. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in Verano di Costa, about 40 miles south-east of Bologna. His father was a blacksmith and a devout socialist and his mother was a devout Catholic schoolteacher. He was named after a socialist figure – Mexican President Benito Juárez. His middle names were Amilcare and Andrea, which both came from Italian socialists – Amilcare Cipriani and Andrea Costa.

2. He was a difficult child and was expelled from school at the age of ten for stabbing a classmate with a penknife. He is said to have pinched people at church to make them cry, led gangs of boys on raids of local farmsteads and was even violent towards a girlfriend.

3. In spite of all that, his grades were good and he qualified as an elementary schoolmaster in 1901.

4. He moved to Switzerland in 1902, partly to find work, partly to avoid having to do national service. He worked briefly as a stonemason in Geneva and got involved in socialist politics. In 1904, Mussolini returned to Italy to take advantage of an amnesty for avoiding military service. A condition for being pardoned was serving in the army, so he joined the corps of the Bersaglieri in Forlì and served two years and then returned to teaching.

5. He was kicked out of the socialist party for supporting Italy’s entry into the first world war.

6. He wrote a novel. It was called The Cardinal’s Mistress and was a work of historical fiction set in 17th-century Italy. He was also said to be a huge fan of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

7. He was claustrophobic, so refused to enter the Blue Grotto (a sea cave on the coast of Capri), and preferred large rooms. His office at the Palazzo Venezia was 18 by 12 by 12 m (60 by 40 by 40 feet).

8. Mussolini was married twice. His first wife was Ida Dalser, with whom he had a son. The marriage was short lived and when Mussolini married his mistress Rachele Guidi, his first wife and son were kept under constant surveillance. Eventually Ida was exiled on an island near Venice and the son was admitted to an asylum where he died aged 26. He remained married to Rachele until he died and had five children with her.

9. Hitler admired him a great deal. The Nazi salute is actually a copy of the one instituted by Mussolini. Mussolini told his mistress, Claretta Petacci, in 1938 that Hitler “had tears in his eyes” when the two met.

10. At the end of the second world war, Mussolini tried to sneak over the Swiss border disguised as a German. An Italian partisan recognised him, though and he was executed the following day.

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 July: Singing telegrams

On this date in 1933, the singing telegram was introduced. 10 things you might not know about them:

1. A singing telegram is a message delivered by an artist in a musical form. They tend to be humorous with the artist in a costume of some kind.

2. Early singing telegrams were delivered by means of a phone call rather than in person.

3. George P. Oslin, a Western Union public relations director, promoted the idea to make telegrams more popular, since they were usually associated with bad news.

4. The first person to receive a singing telegram was singer Rudy Vallee, in honour of his 32nd birthday, from a fan.

5. The Postal Telegraph-Cable Company delivered the first singing telegram. Many sources say it was Western Union, probably because the two companies merged soon after.

6. The telephone operator who delivered the singing telegram to Vallee was called Lucille Lipps.

7. Rudy Vallee wasn’t very impressed, however. He dismissed it as “a phony stunt by the publicity people”.

8. Oslin’s bosses weren’t impressed either. They told him he was “making a laughingstock of the company.” Nevertheless, Western Union didn’t drop singing telegrams until 1974.

9. Other companies still offered the service, though, including one called Western Onion. However, there has been a decline in demand thanks to modern phones and the ability to send a song via a video.

10. Variations of the singing telegram are the kissogram and the stripogram, where the message is delivered with a kiss and/or a striptease.

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 July: Adelaide

On this date in 1836 the city of Adelaide, South Australia was founded. 10 things you might not know about Adelaide:

1. Before the British arrived, the area was inhabited by the indigenous Kaurna people. They called the area Tarntanya which means “red Kangaroo rock”. The British named the city after Queen Adelaide, the wife of King William IV.

2. The city also has a number of nicknames, including City of Churches. There are a lot of churches because it was known as a place of religious freedom and tolerance. It’s also known as the ‘20 minutes city’, because due to its excellent transport links, you can reach anywhere in the city within 20 minutes.

3. It was the only major city in Australia not to be founded by convicts, but rather was a planned capital for free British settlers. The planners at first thought that since the inhabitants didn’t have criminal records, they wouldn’t need a prison. However, once the criminals in other cities heard about this, they came and took advantage, so in due course a prison had to be built.

4. The city was designed by the first surveyor-general of South Australia, Colonel William Light. His plan, now known as Light's Vision, arranged Adelaide in a grid, with five squares in the city centre and a ring of parks, known as the Adelaide Parklands, surrounding it.

5. Adelaide is the opal capital of Australia.

6. It is the capital of South Australia and the fifth largest city in the country.

7. Adelaide is the first and only UNESCO City of Music in Australia. The city was given this status in December 2015 and is part of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.

8. It is home to the third most expensive building in the world, after the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest and One World Trade Center in New York. The building in question is the 800 bed Royal Adelaide Hospital, which cost more than $2 billion. It was built to be eco-friendly and uses robots to move medicines and food around the building.

9. Adelaide is also home to the largest single-span conservatory and the oldest glasshouse in the Southern Hemisphere. The Bicentennial Conservatory was built in 1988 to celebrate Australia’s Bicentenary, and is the youngest building to receive a Heritage Listing. The Palm House is a restored Victorian Glasshouse imported from Germany in 1875, thought to be the only glasshouse of its kind still in existence in the world.

10. In 1881, the University of Adelaide was the first university in Australia to allow women to study. In 1885 Edith Dornwell was the first woman to graduate from the university with a degree in science. In 1894 it became the first city in South Australia to allow women to vote and to stand for parliament.

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 July: George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was born on this date in 1856. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He didn’t like the name George and preferred to be known as Bernard Shaw.

2. He hated school and left at 15 to become a junior clerk in a Dublin estate agency at a salary of £18 a year. He later described the work as a “damnable waste of human life”.

3. For a time he was a Music critic and wrote under the pen-name Corno di Bassetto.

4. He grew a Beard to hide a smallpox scar on his face. All the same, he was an anti-vaxxer and described vaccination as "a peculiarly filthy piece of witchcraft". He believed that improving social housing would be a much more effective means of eradicating smallpox than vaccinating people.

5. He didn’t lose his virginity until he was 29. On his 29^th birthday he started an affair with Jane (Jenny) Patterson, a widow some years his senior.

6. He didn’t marry until he was 41, and possibly then only because his wife, Charlotte, moved in with him to nurse him through a bout of ill health. She had proposed marriage to him before, but he’d turned her down. However, if they were going to be living together, he thought they should marry to avoid scandal. They lived together happily enough although there’s speculation that the marriage was never consummated.

7. He’s one of only two people to win a Nobel Prize and an Oscar. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925 and at first declined it; but later accepted the award but not the prize money. He won the Oscar in 1939 for Best Screenplay for his role in adapting his own play Pygmalion for the screen. The other person to have won both awards is Bob Dylan who won an Oscar in 2001 for Best Original Song - Things have Changed featured in the film The Wonder Boys, and the Nobel prize for Literature in 2016.

8. Shaw had a special writing hut built in his garden which had a mechanism by which he could rotate it in order to get the best of the light throughout the day.

9. He tried to reform the English alphabet in order to combat inconsistencies in English spelling and make it easier for poor people to learn to read. In his will he established two ‘Alphabet Trusts’ to fund the creation of an entirely new 40-letter phonetic alphabet.

10. He enjoyed gardening right up until he was in his 90s but it proved to be the death of him in the end. At 94, he climbed a ladder to prune a tree, fell off, and died of Kidney failure as a result of the fall.

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 July: Mugwort

Today is the Day of Mugwort in the French Revolutionary Calendar. 10 things you might not know about mugwort:

1. Mugwort is a perennial plant that is native to Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. It’s an herbaceous shrub that averages one to two meters in height.

2. One theory as to how mugwort got its name is from the facts that in ancient times, before hops were introduced, it was used to produce beer which was served in mugs.

3. Other sources say the word is derived from the Old Norse muggi meaning "marsh" and the German wuertz, meaning "root", referring to its use since ancient times to repel insects, especially Moths.

4. The Latin name for it is Artemisia vulgaris, and it belongs to the Daisy family. Common names include: common wormwood, wild wormwood, felon herb, chrysanthemum weed, St. John’s plant and sailor’s tobacco.

5. In the Middle Ages, it was believed that St John the Baptist wore it to protect himself while in the wilderness. People believed that mugwort gathered on St John’s Eve gave protection from disease and misfortune.

6. In the Isle of Man, mugwort is known as bollan bane, and is worn on the lapel at the Tynwald Day celebrations.

7. It has been widely used for spiritual and medicinal purposes. Californian Indian tribes as a ceremonial herb, burned and inhaled to promote healthy sleep, sacred dreams, and to keep ghosts and evil spirits away. A ceremonial wash made from the herb was used after ritual dances.

8. Roman soldiers put mugwort in their sandals to protect their feet against fatigue and cramps.

9. In traditional Chinese medicine, mugwort is used in a pulverised form known as moxa in a process called – to perform moxibustion, that is, to burn on specific acupuncture points on the patient's body to achieve therapeutic effects.

10. In Germany, known as Beifuß, it is mainly used to season goose, especially the roast goose traditionally eaten for Christmas.

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 July: Zelda Fitzgerald quotes

10 quotes from Zelda Fitzgerald, who was born on this day in 1900:

1. Look closer and you'll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true.

2. Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.

3. Experience teaches you how to do things you never want to do again.

4. She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.

5. Other people's ideas of us are dependent largely on what they've hoped for.

6. One illusion is as good as another.

7. People are like almanacs, Bonnie – you never can find the information you're looking for, but the casual reading is well worth the trouble.

8. I don't want to live— 
I want to love first, and live…incidentally.

9. It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves.

10. Isn't it funny how danger makes people passionate?

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 July: Philip Marlowe

Private Eye Day is the birthday of Raymond Chandler. Mr. Chandler, the creator of Philip Marlowe, was born this day in 1888. Here are 10 things you might not know about the character:

1. Philip Marlowe is a fictional “hard boiled” private investigator created by Raymond Chandler. He appears in a series of novels including The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; and The Long Goodbye.

2. Philip Marlowe was born in Santa Rosa, California, though the date isn’t specified and his age varies from novel to novel. He’s 33 in 1933, 42 in 1953, and 43 1/2 in 1958.

3. His height isn’t consistent either. in The Long Goodbye he is described as being "six feet, one half inch", while while in Farewell My Lovely he is implied to be six feet tall exactly. He weighs about 190 lb (86 kg).

4. The character first appeared in a series of short stories called Black Mask, along with other private eyes called John Dalmas, Carmady, Ted Carmady and Mallory.

5. The stories are set in Los Angeles from the 1930s through to the 1950s.

6. Before becoming a PI, Marlowe was an investigator for an insurance company and the district attorney's office of Los Angeles County. He was fired from the DA's office for insubordination.

7. He smokes and drinks a lot. He enjoys Whiskey, brandy and scotch and also uses drink to get people talking. His favoured brand of cigarettes is Camel. He drinks Coffee, too and uses a vacuum coffee maker.

8. He’s single for most of the novels although it’s generally implied in them that he gets it together with a female character at some point. At the beginning of Poodle Springs, it is revealed that he has just married Linda Loring, a love interest from a previous novel.

9. He relaxes by playing Chess against himself, or duplicating historical games from tournaments.

10. Marlowe has been played by many actors including Humphrey Bogart, Robert Montgomery, James Garner, Elliott Gould, Robert Mitchum, Danny Glover, James Caan and Liam Neeson.

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 July: Hammocks

Today is Hammock Day. 10 things you might not know about hammocks:

1. The word hammock either comes from Spanish, from maka, a Taíno culture Arawakan word meaning 'stretch of cloth' with the prefix “ha” meaning the action of hanging; or from the Hammack tree, native to Latin America, from which hammocks were woven.

2. Most sources say they were invented by the Mayans and the idea brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus.

3. Some 19th-century authors attributed the invention of the hammock to the Athenian politician Alcibiades. Plutarch wrote that Alcibiades had his galley bed hung from ropes, although it wasn’t clear if it was an actual hammock or just a normal bed hanging on ropes.

4. Hammocks are more relaxing to sleep in than ordinary beds, probably because the rocking motion brings to mind the sensation of being rocked by one’s mother as a baby.

5. At time of writing, Guinness World Records says the largest hammock in the world measures 20.84 m (68 ft 4 in) long and 9.42 m (30 ft 10 in) wide, and was created by King Digital Entertainment (UK) and presented in New York in 2015.

6. The highest is probably one which hung over a canyon in Utah, 492 feet in the air.

7. Hammocks have traditionally been the sleeping arrangement for sailors in olden times as they were less likely to fall out of them in rough weather. The first official mention of hammocks in the Royal Navy was in 1597 when it ordered three hundred bolts of canvas for "hanging cabbons or beddes".

8. After Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin reported that sleeping on the floor of the lunar module was uncomfortable and cold, subsequent missions provided hammocks.

9. The most expensive hammock in the world is the Petiole, which costs $35,000. It can hold up to 250 kilograms, and blocks most UV rays.

10. There’s café in Tokyo where chairs have been replaced with hammocks. It’s called Mahika Mano.

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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