15 March: Lady Augusta Gregory Quotes

Today, 10 quotes from Lady Augusta Gregory, an Irish playwright and poet who was born on this date in 1852.

1. To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people.

2. There's more learning than is taught in books.

3. It takes madness to find out madness.

4. Every trick is an old one, but with a change of players, a change of dress, it comes out as new as before.

5. It is better to be tied to any thorny bush than to be with a cross man.

6. It's a grand thing to be able to take your money in your hand and to think no more of it when it slips away from you than you would a trout that would slip back into the stream.

7. Every day in the year there comes some malice into the world, and where it comes from is no good place.

8. There is lasting kindness in Heaven when no kindness is found upon earth.

9. Our curses on them that boil the eggs too hard! What use is an egg that is hard to any person on earth?

10. It's best make changes little by little, the same as you'd put clothes upon a growing child.

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

14 March: Sapphires

Today is National Jewel Day, so to celebrate here are ten facts about Sapphires:

1. The word sapphire is derived from the Latin word sapphirus, which which originally referred to lapis lazuli.

2. Sapphire ranks as a 9 on the Mohs scale of hardness, meaning it is the second hardest material known to man. Only Diamond is harder. Hence some of sapphire’s industrial uses: lenses and screens for Watches, and Bar code scanners.

3. Sapphire is a variety of the mineral corundum, consisting of aluminium oxide with trace amounts of elements such as Iron, titanium, cobalt, Lead, chromium, vanadium, magnesium, boron, and Silicon. They’re actually made from the same stuff as Rubies.

4. Although we associate sapphire with the colour Blue, depending on the trace elements they can come in a range of hues including clear, Pink, Orange and even Black. Sapphires in colours other than blue are called "fancy" sapphires. A padparadscha is a pinkish orange sapphire which is especially rare and valuable.

5. Sapphire is the birthstone for people born in September. It also represents both the 5^th and 45^th wedding anniversaries, and a sapphire jubilee occurs after 65 years. In 2017 Queen Elizabeth II marked the sapphire jubilee of her accession to the throne.

6. Staying with royalty for a moment, in 1981, Prince Charles presented Lady Diana Spencer with an engagement ring featuring a diamond-encrusted oval royal blue sapphire weighing 12 carats. This became the most famous blue sapphire in the world. Sapphires were also a popular choice for Victorian engagement rings, especially surrounded by diamonds in floral designs.

7. Sapphires can withstand temperatures as high as 1700-1900° Celsius without melting. Exposing them to temperatures this high is part of the process of enhancing their beauty.

8. The sapphire has been the official state gem of Queensland, Australia since August 1985.

9. Sapphires can be found all over the world, but Sri Lanka is the best producer.

10. Now for the folklore and superstitions. Hindus believe that wearing sapphire makes the planet Saturn (Shani) favourable towards the wearer; an old Italian superstition claimed that sapphires were good for eye problems and melancholy. Mary Queen of Scots owned a medicinal sapphire worn as a pendant to rub on her sore eyes. Many believe that sapphires can improve your ability to concentrate, be more creative, think more clearly, and be happier. It is also said to help eradicate unfavourable feelings and ideas.

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

13 March: Earmuffs Day

Today is Earmuffs Day, commemorating Chester Greenwood, from Farmington, Maine, who patented them on this date in 1877.

1. Earmuffs can be defined as a piece of equipment or clothing accessory that covers the Ears. They are used for either thermal (keeping the ears warm) or acoustic (protection from loud noise) purposes.

2. Thermal earmuffs came first. The above mentioned Chester Greenwood was out Ice skating at the age of 15 when he came up with an idea to keep his ears warm.

3. He went home and asked his grandmother to sew pieces of Beaver fur between two loops of wire.

4. Greenwood made further improvements to his design – he added a steel band to connect the loops to hold them in place. He also covered the inside of the mufflers with black velvet for comfort.

5. He was just 18 when granted the patent. However, while he is generally credited with the invention of earmuffs, he wasn’t the first to come up with the idea. The reason he got a patent was the improvements he made, in particular a v-shaved swivel hinge that kept earmuffs tight to the ear.

6. Earmuffs became Greenwood’s career. He opened a factory in Farmington which by 1883 was making 50,000 pairs a year and continued making them for 60 years. Farmington calls itself the Earmuff Capital of the World and has an annual celebration, Chester Greenwood Day on December 21, and a parade on the first Saturday in December.

7. ‘Earmuffs’ as one word was first used in 1889.

8. Why wear earmuffs and not a woolly hat, you may be asking? The ears stick out from the side of the head in order to fulfil their function of gathering sound waves. They have a high skin surface-area-to-volume ratio, and very little muscle tissue. When a person is involved in strenuous activity wind chill factor can make the ears cold but the rest of the body may be warm. Wearing a hat in these circumstances could result in a person becoming too hot.

9. Acoustic earmuffs are believed to have originated during World War II. Pilots of military aircraft wore leather flaps over their ears to protect against hearing loss due to engine noise.

10. Farmers put earmuffs on calves during the winter to protect them from the harsh cold and prevent frostbite. There are pictures on Instagram!

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

12 March: Vaslav Nijinsky

On this date in 1890 Vaslav Nijinsky, Russian Ballet dancer, was born. 10 facts about him:

1. He was born in Kyiv, in what is is now Ukraine. His parents were of Polish extraction and so Nijinsky identified as Polish, even though he could barely speak the language.

2. He was exposed to ballet from an early age as his parents were both dancers with a touring company. His mother Eleanora was orphaned as a young girl and only survived by becoming a full member of a ballet company at the age of 13. At age nine, Nijinsky was accepted at the Imperial Ballet School in St Petersburg, the pre-eminent ballet school in the world.

3. Needless to say, he excelled at dance while at school, but his grades in subjects which didn’t interest him were poor. The fact that he was often chosen to perform small roles in productions didn’t help as he would miss lessons for rehearsals. He was warned that his dancing talent was the only reason his poor grades didn’t get him expelled. He wasn’t popular with other students, who teased him for being Polish and for looking vaguely Japanese. Chances are they were jealous of his talent, as well. In 1901 a classmate deliberately caused him to fall. He suffered a concussion and was in a coma for four days.

4. That said, he must have made some friends, as when he did get expelled, it wasn’t for bad grades but for an incident where he and other students shot catapults at people’s hats from the carriage driving them to the Mariinsky Theatre. Nijinsky got a beating for that and had to undergo a probationary period as a non-boarder when re-admitted.

5. On Sunday, 9 January 1905, Nijinsky was caught in the Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg. Soldiers fired on the crowd, and Nijinsky was among the injured, suffering a head wound. His friend’s sister, however, disappeared in the riot and was never found.

6. In 1907, he graduated and became a member of the Imperial Ballet, and in 1909, he joined the Ballets Russes, a new ballet company started by Sergei Diaghilev, who became his lover. It seems likely Nijinsky was bisexual although his first experiences were with men. It’s likely he lost his virginity to Prince Pavel Lvov, a wealthy fan. Nijinsky’s mother tried to discourage his heterosexuality and even approved of his relationship with Prince Lvov. This may have been because married dancers were often dropped from the ballet companies and she did not want that to happen to her son.

7. Nijinsky’s relationship with Diaghilev was already on the rocks when the company went on a tour of South America. Diaghilev didn’t go, citing that he had been told that he would die at sea, although it is more likely he preferred to go on holiday in Venice and have dalliances with other men. Travelling with the company was an obsessive fan called Romola de Pulszky, the daughter of a Hungarian Count. Having seen Nijinsky perform she had immediately broken off her engagement and become obsessed with Nijinsky. On tour, she would book cabins near to his and even made friends with his masseuse. She attended every performance and although he initially took her to be a Hungarian ballerina and was friendly, when he found out she was just a fan he started ignoring her. Undeterred, Romola managed to get herself into a dancing class with Nijinsky, which annoyed him because he didn’t want to teach people who were not professional dancers. Somewhere along the line, though, Nijinsky must have warmed to her, because he eventually got a colleague to propose marriage to her on his behalf. She thought it was a cruel joke and ran away crying until Nijinsky proposed in person in broken French and mime. The couple were married on 10 September 1913 and the event was announced to the world's press, much to the distress of Diaghilev, who reportedly sobbed uncontrollably and went on a bender.

8. The marriage got off to a rocky start. Nijinsky offered to teach Romola to dance but she refused, which told him she wasn’t as into ballet as he’d thought she was. This meant she didn’t love what was most important to him. Romola must have had cold feet as well, since she later said that she "almost cried with thankfulness" when her husband didn’t try to have sex with her on their wedding night. Still, things must have thawed out and improved over time as the couple had two daughters in due course.

9. When he reached his late 20s, Nijinsky became mentally unstable. At performances, he would throw tantrums, and audiences noticed that he “no longer danced like a god”. He kept a diary for a few months in which he wrote of his fear of being institutionalised and drew unsettling sketches, of unblinking Eyes, because he was sure he was being watched. He also drew Spiders with Diaghilev’s face. Romola and her family forced him to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed him with schizophrenia. His worst fears were realised and he spent the next 30 years in mental hospitals. Some light shone into his life, though, when he met a group of Russian soldiers in an encampment. They were playing traditional folk tunes on a balalaika and other instruments. Inspired by the music and hearing the language of his youth, he started dancing, astounding the men with his skills. Drinking and laughing with them helped him start to speak again after long periods of silence during his treatment.

10. He was the only male dancer of the time who could perform routines en pointe. Most male dancers never bothered to learn as they saw it as too girly for them. Nijinsky, however, wanted to master and be the best at every dance related skill.

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

11 March: Hammers

As today is Worship of Tools Day in India, here are some facts about an object from the toolbox: the hammer.

1. Archaeological records show the hammer may be the oldest tool for which definite evidence exists. It could even predate humanity itself and have been used by the ancestors of homo sapiens. The earliest hammers found date to around 3.3 million years ago. In 2012 archaeologists Sonia Harmand and Jason Lewis of Stony Brook University found stones which had been shaped to use as hammers at Kenya's Lake Turkana.

2. The first hammers didn’t have handles, but as time went on, users came up with the revolutionary idea of adding a handle. The earliest handles were made from sticks, tied to the hammer head with animal sinew.

3. There’s evidence, too, that all the great civilizations used them for construction. They would have been used by the Egyptians when building The Pyramids, and the ancient Greeks when constructing the Acropolis.

4. Hammers are a common symbol in heraldry. In the Middle Ages, hammers were often used in blacksmith's guild logos.

5. In more modern times, a hammer is often an element used on a flag or logo to represent working people. A hammer and a pick, for example, have been used to represent mining. The hammer and sickle, the symbol of the former Soviet Union represented the industrial working class and the agricultural working class respectively.

6. In Pink Floyd – The Wall, two hammers crossed represent the fascist takeover of the concert during In the Flesh. The hammer, in this case, beats down any "Nails" that stick out.

7. A hammer head is made by a process called “hot forging” in which a steel bar is heated to about 2350°F (1300°C). This makes the steel soft enough to be manipulated into shape.

8. Ancient gods are sometimes depicted with hammers. Thor’s Mjölnir is perhaps the best known, but the Greek hero Hercules and the Celtic god Sucellus also had hammers. In American folklore there is a hero called John Henry. He was an African American freedman, said to have worked as a "steel-driving man" whose job was to hammer a steel drill into rock to make holes for explosives during the building of railway tunnels. His hammer represents the strength and endurance of a man.

9. There’s a sport called hammer throwing, but what the athletes throw in this event doesn’t look anything like the hammer in your tool box. This hammer is a metal ball attached to a wire with a handle on the end.

10. Hammers were once used as weapons. War hammers were used by both foot soldiers and cavalry. A historical figure known for using one is Judah Maccabee, a 2nd-century BC Jewish rebel.

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

10 March: Telephone Day

Today is Telephone Day, because it was on March 10, 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell made the first telephone call, to his assistant in another room. The first words spoken were “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.” 10 things you might not know about telephones.

1. The word telephone comes from the Greek words “tele”, which means far or distant, and “phone”, which means voice. So, the name of the device translates as “distant voice”. The device we know today wasn’t the first to be called by the name. The word “telephone” was first used in 1828 by Francois Sudre to describe a musical signalling device.

2. When we pick up the phone, we say, “Hello”, but that wasn’t the greeting proposed by Bell. He preferred “ahoy-hoy,” an old nautical greeting. It was Thomas Edison who popularised “hello”. According to legend, Bell refused to conform to this and answered his calls with “ahoy-hoy” until the day he died. It‘s also said that Bell refused to have a telephone in his house because he considered it a distraction from his work.

3. While Bell is usually credited with inventing the telephone, Antonio Meucci, an immigrant from Italy, first demonstrated a similar device which he called the “teletrofono” in New York in 1860, 17 years before Bell created his invention. As of 2002, Meucci was voted by U.S. Congress to be recognised as the inventor of the telephone.

4. The first payphone was installed in 1889 in Hartford, Connecticut. It was inspired by inventor Willian Gray, who was frustrated that he had to beg his neighbours for a phone to call a doctor when his wife was ill. While use of payphones is declining thanks to mobile phones, there are still about 100,000 of them still in use in the US.

5. All telephone service in the USA and Canada was suspended for a full minute in August 1922 – during Alexander Graham Bell’s funeral.

6. Martin Cooper, an engineer at Motorola, made the first handheld mobile phone call on the streets of New York on April 3, 1973, using a prototype of the Motorola DynaTAC.

7. The first smart phone was made by IBM in 1994. It was called Simon and featured a touch screen, email capabilities, and a handful of basic apps such as a calculator and sketch pad.

8. There’s more gold in a ton of mobile phones than there is in a ton of Gold mine ore. On average, there are around 0.034 grams of gold in an average smartphone.

9. There are more mobile phones in the world than there are people. The number is is expected to reach 18.22 billion in 2025.

10. The longest long distance telephone call ever took place in 1969. It was between US president Richard Nixon and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, who were on the Moon at the time. Nixon called to congratulate them on their achievement.

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

9 March: Vita Sackville-West

This date in 1892 was the birth date of Vita Sackville-West, poet and novelist. 10 facts about her:

1. Her full name was Victoria Mary. She was called Vita to distinguish her from her mother who was also named Victoria.

2. Her mother was the illegitimate daughter of Lionel Sackville-West, 2nd Baron Sackville and the Spanish dancer Pepita, one of five illegitimate children who were all farmed out to convents to be raised when Lionel became the British minister in Buenos Aires. When his career took him to Washington DC, he needed a diplomatic hostess and so he brought his eldest daughter over to fulfil that role. She was a popular young woman, who, it is alleged, received marriage proposals from widowed President of the United States Chester Arthur, Pierpont Morgan, Rudyard Kipling, Auguste Rodin, and Henry Ford before choosing her first cousin, Lionel Sackville-West. Vita was the couple’s only child.

3. Philip de László was commissioned to paint a portrait of Vita when she turned 18. Vita’s mother chose the outfit she would wear because it was appropriate for an eligible young lady. Vita disliked the formal Edwardian look and hid the painting away in the attics at Sissinghurst.

4. Vita was born at the family’s ancestral home, Knole, which had been had been given to Thomas Sackville by Elizabeth I, in the sixteenth century. Although she loved her home, the law at the time meant she couldn’t inherit it and when her father died the house would go to her uncle along with the title. She would have to marry in order not to be homeless. Knole is now in the possession of the National Trust.

5. Vita had plenty of men interested in marrying her, some with titles, but she dismissed them as ‘little dancing things in ballrooms’. Her parents would have liked her to marry Lord Grandy, heir to the Duke of Rutland, or Lord Lascelles, future Earl of Harewood, but Vita found them morose and dull respectively. Ivan Hay, one of her dance partners at society events and son of Lord Kilmarnock proposed to her twice and gave her a bear cub as a Christmas gift. Vita named the bear ‘Ivan the Terrible’. In the end, she chose a diplomat called Harold Nicolson, who was bisexual like she was and would tolerate an open marriage. Vita’s parents weren’t happy, though as he only earned £250 a year. Harold proposed to Vita at the Hatfield Ball in 1912. The couple had never even kissed at this point. Harold was so nervous that he pulled all the Buttons off his Gloves. Vita and Harold married in the family chapel at Knole on 1 October 1913 in a small ceremony with just 26 guests.

6. Vita was somewhat isolated as a child, finding it difficult to make friends. She was a bit of a tomboy, owning a pocket knife and often being punished for “wrestling with the hall-boy.” She started writing at the age of 12 after reading Cyrano de Bergerac. By the age of eighteen, Vita had written eight full-length novels and five plays, some of which were in French.

7. She published more than a dozen collections of poetry and 13 novels during her life. She was twice awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Imaginative Literature: in 1927 for her pastoral epic, The Land, and in 1933 for her Collected Poems. Nevertheless, she would compare herself unfavourably with her contemporaries and believed herself to be “sluggish of mind”.

8. Sackville-West was initially taught at home by governesses and later attended Helen Wolff's school for girls, an exclusive day school in Mayfair. It was here that she met her first lesbian lovers, Violet Keppel and Rosamund Grosvenor. Rosamund was a frequent visitor at Knole, but it was Violet with whom she maintained a relationship well into adulthood. After Vita had had two sons with Harold, she and Violet made a pledge never to have sex with their husbands again. They used to run off together and have adventures, with Vita posing as a man named Julian. Their mothers thoroughly disapproved, and on one occasion Harold and Violet’s husband chased after their wives in a two seater plane. Violet was eventually ditched when Vita learned she had broken the pact and slept with her husband.

9. In 1930 Vita and her family bought Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, which had once been owned by Vita’s ancestors. Perhaps this made up slightly for losing her childhood home. They restored the house and gardens, and Vita started writing again after a six year break in order to pay for the renovations and her sons’ educations. In 1947 she began a weekly column in The Observer called "In your Garden", which was popular until a year before her death, and helped to make Sissinghurst one of the most famous and visited gardens in England. Sissinghurst, like Knole, now belongs to the National Trust.

10. Vita is well known for her 10 year relationship with Virginia Woolf and it seems they were a positive influence on each other and their writing, as both women were at the peak of their careers and produced their best writing while together.

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.

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