25 July: Arthur James Balfour

Born on this date in 1848 was Arthur James Balfour, British Prime Minister from 1902-5. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in Whittingehame, East Lothian, the eldest son of James Maitland Balfour and Lady Blanche Gascoyne-Cecil.

2. He went to Grange Preparatory School at Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, Eton College and the University of Cambridge, where he read moral sciences at Trinity College.

3. In 1874 he was elected the Conservative Member of Parliament for Hertford. Four years later he became private secretary to Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury, then Foreign Secretary in Benjamin Disraeli The Earl of Beaconsfield’s government.

4. The prime minister he succeeded was his uncle, Lord Salisbury.

5. At the time, a lot of MPs didn’t take him very seriously. They thought he was only playing at politics as it was the thing to do for young people from his kind of background. When Lord Salisbury gave him the job as Secretary for Ireland, they no doubt thought it was favouritism and that he’d not be up to the job. Turned out he did fairly well, restoring the rule of law and calming the Irish conflict for a generation.

6. He never married, and his household was maintained by his also unmarried sister, Alice. One possible reason that he remained single is that the love of his life died of typhoid before he could propose to her. Balfour met May Lyttelton in 1870 when she was 19 and when she died, arranged for an emerald ring to be buried with her. May’s sister believed that they were about to announce an engagement, had May lived. On the other hand, May’s letters never mentioned any romance with Balfour, although she did talk about her other suitors. He visited her only once during her serious three-month illness, and was  accepting social invitations within a month of her death. Did he genuinely find it hard to express his feelings, or did he, as at least one historian has suggested, use May’s death as a convenient reason for never marrying when he was actually gay or asexual?

7. He was a fan of sports. He played Golf and Tennis and supported Manchester City F.C.

8. He was also very interested in dialects and donated money to Joseph Wright for his work on The English Dialect Dictionary. Wright wrote in the preface that the project would have been "in vain" without Balfour’s donation.

9. Balfour was interested in philosophy and belief systems. He wrote papers on philosophy: ‘A Defence of Philosophic Doubt’, ‘The Foundations of Belief’ and ‘Theism and Humanism’. He was also a member of the Society for Psychical Research, a society studying psychic and paranormal phenomena and served as its president for a time.

10. After the First World War, Balfour submitted a design to the Imperial War Graves Commission for a cruciform headstone for war graves. His design was rejected. He was offered the chance to submit another, but declined to do so, having been rejected once.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

24 July: Alexandre Dumas

Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Musketeers, was born on this date in 1802. 10 facts about him:

1. His father, Thomas-Alexandre, was the illegitimate son of Marquis Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie and one of his slaves, Marie Cessete Dumas. When Thomas decided to join the French army, his father disapproved of him using the name Davy de la Pailleterie, so he took his mother’s name, Dumas. At 31, he became one of Napoleon’s most valued generals and had acquired the nickname “Black Devil.” It was this background which made Dumas the author afraid to travel to the US for fear of being sold into slavery.

2. His son, the author Alexandre Dumas, came to be known as Alexandre Dumas père to distinguish him from his son, also called Alexandre Dumas and also a writer. The latter was known as Alexandre Dumas fils. He became a writer, too, and wrote La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady of the Camellias), which was adapted as the opera La Traviata by Guiseppe Verdi.

3. However, it’s the one in the middle we’re focussing on. He is best known for penning The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, but these are by no means all he wrote. He wrote a Christian history about the conversion of St Paul, numerous adventure and fantasy stories, including a novel about Vampires (The Pale Lady) and The Wolf Leader, one of the first novels to feature Werewolves. He wrote romances featuring Marie Antoinette and lots of articles and journals about politics and history.

4. He was also a playwright. In fact, he started his career writing plays. His first play, Henry III and His Court, was produced in 1829 when Dumas was 27 years old, and met with much acclaim. His second play, Christine, produced the following year, was equally popular. The income from these two plays meant he could quit his day job and write full time.

5. The day job in question was as a scribe for duc d’Orléans who later became King Louis Philippe.

6. Dumas married actress Ida Ferrier in 1840. She died in 1849. The couple had no children together. He is said, however, to have had about 40 mistresses and four illegitimate children that we know about. He acknowledged Alexandre Dumas fils at age seven and took over his education, separating him from his mother. One article I read said that Dumas actually claimed to have fathered more than 500 children.

7. Dumas was a member of a group called the Club des Hashischins, which also included Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire and Honore de Balzac. The purpose of the club? To get together and smoke weed.

8. Dumas was a chronic insomniac, and went to the doctor about it. The doctor prescribed an Apple, to be eaten every day at 7:00 AM under the Arch of Triumph in Paris. The reasoning behind this odd prescription was that it would help Dumas get into a daily routine.

9. With the profits from his books, Dumas built a home at Port Marly, Yvelines, France, which he called Château de Monte Cristo. It is now a museum.

10. He died in 1870, aged 68, probably from a heart attack. In 1970, on the centenary of his death, the Paris Métro named a station in his honour.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

23 July: 204

Today is the 204^th day of the year. 10 facts about the number 204.

1. The year 204 was a leap year starting on Sunday, known at the time as the Year of the Consulship of Cilo and Flavius. During this year, a trade recession in the Leptis Magna region of Africa was alleviated by Emperor Septimius Severus, who bought up the country's Olive oil for free distribution in Rome.

2. 204 is the HTTP status code indicating the request was successfully fulfilled and that there is no additional content to send in the response payload body.

3. The A204 road runs between Brixton and Tulse Hill.

4. 204 is the number of different sized squares you can find in a chessboard.

5. The Peugeot 204 is a small family car produced by the French manufacturer Peugeot between 1965 and 1976.

6. In London, the 204 bus runs between Sudbury Town Station and Edgware Station.

7. Area code 204 is the telephone area code for the Canadian province of Manitoba, including the Environment Canada weather station at Eureka, Nunavut.

8. 204 Kallisto is a Main belt Asteroid discovered by Johann Palisa in 1879, and was named after the same nymph Callisto in Greek mythology as Jupiter's moon Callisto.

9. 204 is a square pyramidal number, which means 204 balls can be stacked in a pyramid with an 8 × 8 square base.

10. In numerology, 204 resonates with family and doing things together. A person with number 204 will feel they are a member of a family, which may be a biological family or a group of close friends. The house or company or geographical area with an intrinsic number 204 as part of its name or address is permeated by a family energy of nurture and harmony. There is teamwork and a sense that anything is possible.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

22 July: The Mayans

Today is the Mayan New Year. 10 things you might not know about the Mayans.

1. The term "Maya" was derived from the city of Mayapán.

2. They lived in Mesoamerica, which today comprises south-east Mexico, Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. Their civilization lasted from around 2000 BC to around 1600 AD. During this time Britain went through the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Medieval and Tudor periods.

3. They had a complex writing system comprising 800 glyphs, each representing a syllable. They wrote down historical events, astronomy, mathematics, and religion. They even wrote books, but very few survived the zealous book burnings carried out by Spanish Catholics. That said, only the elite could read or write – commoners were illiterate. One of the surviving texts is called the Popol Vuh. It contains the Mayan creation story and myths about a pair of heroic Twins called Hunahpu and Xbalanque. It was translated by one Father Francisco Ximénez, and although the original was lost, the translation survives.

4. The Mayan calendar was very precise and included a Leap Day type adjustment to keep it in step with the solar year. There was a 260-day cycle known as the Tzolkin and various other shorter and longer cycles. Every so often all the cycles would come to an end at the same time and the whole thing would reset to zero. This is what happened on 21 December 2012, when some people took it to mean that the world would end. It didn’t, of course. The Mayans themselves didn’t see such an event as the end of the world, but rather as a new beginning.

5. We have the Mayans to thank for Chocolate. They made it into a drink with water, Honey, chilli peppers and cornmeal to be consumed on special occasions or as part of a religious ceremony. The concept of zero is another thing they gave to the world.

6. The Mayans saw flat foreheads as a beauty standard. They even went so far as to use boards to flatten babies’ foreheads, or to bind their heads. Beauty standards also included filed and decorated teeth. They would inlay their teeth with jade or other precious stones as a sign of wealth and status.

7. They had priests who would perform public ceremonies which might include feasting, bloodletting, incense burning, music, ritual dance and even ritual enemas, possibly as an efficient way to take in hallucinogenic substances while avoiding vomiting. Sacrifices were a part of it too, as Mayan deities were a bloodthirsty lot. While animals or birds might suffice a lot of the time, there were occasions when only a human sacrifice would do. More often than not the unfortunate victims would be high status prisoners of war. The best possible sacrifice would be a captured enemy king. Methods of sacrifice included decapitation or removal of the Heart. People who were to be sacrificed to the rain god were sometimes painted Blue.

8. If they had enough prisoners, they might force them to play a ball game called Pok-a-Tok. The object of the game was to get a ball made from natural latex (the Mayans were the first to use rubber as well) through a hoop without using hands. The stakes were literally life or death as the losing team would be sacrificed.

9. The Mayans were also known for their architecture. They built cities and pyramids. Many of them survive today and it’s possible to see them at Chichen Itza, Palenque, Uxmal, and Yaxchilan in Mexico, Tikal in Guatemala and Copán in Honduras. Mayan pyramids are still being discovered, too. As recently as 2015 a Maya pyramid more than 1000 years old was discovered at Toniná in Mexico, and was found to be Mexico’s tallest pyramid at 246 feet (75 meters) high.

10. The Mayan culture seemed to disappear around 1600 AD and nobody knows for sure why. Conquering Spaniards, disease and climate change have all been blamed. That said, the Mayans are actually still around. More than 6 million people alive today in the area that was Mesoamerica are descended from them and speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages. They practice ancient shamanistic religions and still use recipes the Mayans used. Cochinita pibil tacos are an example of an ancient Mayan recipe still in use today.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

21 July: Jane Name Day

If your name is Jane, today is your name day. Jane is a feminine given name. It is ultimately derived from the Hebrew name Yochanan meaning "Yahweh is merciful". The name was first used frequently in the mid-16th century for the daughters of aristocrats as an alternative to Joan. 10 famous Janes:

1. Calamity Jane: U.S. frontierswoman.

2. Jane Austen (pictured): British novelist, known for Emma and Pride and Prejudice.

3. Lady Jane Grey: Queen of England for nine days before being executed at the age of sixteen, also known as "Jane of England"

4. Jane Seymour: Queen and wife of King Henry VIII of England.

5. Jane Goodall: English primatologist, known for studying chimpanzees and founder of the Jane Goodall Institute.

6. Jane Eyre: titular character of a famous novel by Charlotte Bronte.

7. Jane Fonda: American actress and fitness instructor, daughter of Henry Fonda. Played Grace in Grace and Frankie.

8. Jane Horrocks: English actress known for playing Bubble in Absolutely Fabulous and was also the star of Little Voice.

9. Jayne Torvill: British ice-dancer and 1984 Olympic gold medallist with partner Christopher Dean.

10. Jane Porter: Tarzan’s love interest.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

20 July: Gregor Mendel

Born this day in 1822 was Gregor Mendel, priest and scientist. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. Gregor Mendel was a monk, a teacher and a botanist, famous for his work on genetic inheritance. He is sometimes referred to as the father of modern genetics.

2. His father was a poor farmer in Heinzendorf, Silesia, Austrian Empire (now part of the Czech Republic). He had two sisters, Veronika and Theresia. The farm had been in the family for more than 130 years. Mendel’s name was Johann until he joined the Order of Saint Augustine and took the name Gregor.

3. He was a bright child, and a local priest persuaded his parents to send him to school and later university, where he studied physics and maths. He didn’t have an easy time of it, though, as his family were so poor and couldn’t support him financially. He tutored other students to make ends meet, and his sister Theresia gave him her dowry to help out as well. He was able to pay her back later by supporting her three sons in their studies. Even so, his financial situation got him down to the extent that he suffered from severe depression and had to go home twice to recover.

4. Becoming a monk was as much a financial decision as a religious one. His father would have liked him to take over the farm, but Mendel saw a way out of constant hardship and freedom to continue studying. The monastic life, he said, spared him the "perpetual anxiety about a means of livelihood."

5. At first, he was given the task of visiting the sick, but he found that so distressing that it made him ill, so the abbot found him a teaching position instead. He was good at that, even though when the law required him to take a teaching exam, he failed it twice, possibly due to nerves – the second time he attempted it, it gave him a nervous breakdown.

6. The abbot at the time, Cyril Napp, allowed him to conduct experiments into hybridisation at the monastery. Mendel’s most famous work was with Peas, chosen because they had lots of varying characteristics and they were easy to grow. He also did some work with hawkweed, and found the patterns of inheritance were somewhat different and neither he nor his academic associates could figure out why. It was some years later that scientists worked out that hawkweed also reproduces asexually which would have skewed the results.

7. He also worked with Bees, although none of his observations survived. Most of the monks found the bees aggressive but Mendel loved them and called them "my dearest little animals". He also, according to his fellow monks, bred Mice. There is a myth that the abbot stopped those experiments and switched to plants because it was unseemly for a celibate monk to watch mice getting it on. This is probably untrue because the monastery kept merino Sheep and the monks would have had to oversee the breeding of those; and it was partly because of the sheep that Mendel was encouraged to study genetics, because it might help produce more and better wool.

8. Mendel’s work didn’t exactly take the world by storm initially. Only 40 scientists attended when he presented his paper, and they didn’t really get it. Charles Darwin didn’t even know Mendel’s work existed; some say that if he had, the science of genetics would have taken off much sooner. Mendel shrugged all this off and commented, "My time will come." Even so, he made no efforts to publicise his work, only ordering 40 reprints. The whereabouts of only eight of those are known.

9. In due course, Mendel was elected abbot of the monastery and this left him little time for scientific research. As well as the day to day administration, his time was taken up by an ongoing dispute with the tax authorities, opposing a tax which he felt was unconstitutional. His successor decided to draw a line under all that and burned most of Gregor’s papers, so it may well be that a lot of his research went up in smoke at the same time.

10. Mendel died of Kidney disease at the age of 61. 200 years later, his body was exhumed and his DNA sequenced, showing that he would have been predisposed to Heart problems.

 

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book

19 July: Edgar Degas

Edgar Degas, the French artist famous for paintings of Ballet dancers, was born on this date in 1834. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in Paris and was the eldest of five children. His father was a banker and his mother was a dancer and a Creole from New Orleans. His full name was Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas.

2. His interest in creating art began when he was a child. He and his sister Léonie would copy prints from the Louvre's collection.

3. His father wanted him to go to law school. Degas enrolled at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris in 1853 but applied little effort to his studies. He registered as a copyist in The Louvre Museum, which was where his interest really lay.

4. An early influence on his art was Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who he met in 1855. He was subsequently admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts to study drawing.

5. From 1856 he spent some time in Italy, staying with his aunt’s family in Naples. It was here that he made the first studies for his painting The Bellelli Family. He also drew and painted copies of works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and other Renaissance artists, although rather than straight copies, he’d select a detail from their work to copy.

6. When his father died in 1874, Degas found out that one of his brothers was in serious debt. To preserve his family's reputation, Degas sold his house and art collection and paid off the debts. He now had to rely on selling his artwork in order to get an income, but the stress must have been beneficial as it’s said much of his best work was produced during this time.

7. He is often described as an impressionist, but Degas would not have agreed with that assessment. He much preferred to be described as a realist, and while he participated in exhibitions with impressionist artists, he didn’t get on with them all that well. He alienated them by including non-impressionist artists in the exhibitions he organised himself.

8. He was, by all accounts, a grumpy old git. He had a sharp wit and didn’t hesitate to use it. He was a misogynist who referred to the dancers he painted as "little monkey-girls" and actually enjoyed watching them go through the torture of dance rehearsals until their feet bled. He once said “I have perhaps too often considered woman as an animal.” Needless to say, he never married. He also said “the artist must live alone, and his private life must remain unknown.” Not only that, he was anti-Semitic and dropped all his Jewish friends in the wake of The Dreyfus Affair. Renoir said of him: "What a creature he was, that Degas! All his friends had to leave him; I was one of the last to go, but even I couldn't stay till the end."

9. He’s known for his paintings, but he was a keen photographer as well and took pictures by lamplight. One of his photos was a lamplit portrait of Renoir and Stephane Mallarme. He took photographs of his models to use as visual references.

10. He also made a number of sculptures from wax, which were discovered after he died. Many of them were re-cast in bronze. Perhaps the most famous of these was The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years which was of a young ballerina dressed in a real tutu and which also had real hair.

Beta

(Combat Team Series #2)

Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?

Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.

Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream. 

Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.

Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.

Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.

Paperback

E book