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Jean Baptiste Rives

None of the crew of the Uranie deserted in Hawaii, but when the corvette left the islands at least one Frenchman was left behind. He had been there when the expedition arrived …..

Thoughts on the Lairg gravity low

In 2008 Ken Amor and a group of his colleagues from Oxford and Aberdeen universities published a reinterpretation of the Stac Fada member of the Stoer Group sediments that outcrop on Stoer beach and in some other similar localities in the northwest of Scotland....

The gold of the Rand

So, the frenzy of the Brecon & Radnor by-election is now behind us and we can all move on. A frenzy, it has to be said, that was more apparent in the pages of the national press than it ever was here on the ground in East Radnorshire. Faced with a line-up of five of the most lack-lustre prospective MPs ever presented to voters in what was billed as a crucial by-election…

Hawaii at last

Almost exactly two hundred years ago, on the 5th of August 1819, after almost two months at sea, Rose de Freycinet added a short note to her ongoing letter to her mother. At last, at last, I can see land, but what land! Before us is a mountain that Louis thinks is...

“Mea culpa” on Myanmar gravity

I imagine that anyone trying to write a history of anything is all too aware of the probability (near certainty) that something important will have been left out. Sometimes new documents will emerge after the book or paper has been finalised, sometimes things just get...

“The Fountainhead” on stage

If I had been following the theatre more consistently, I would have known some weeks ago, when I was writing the previous blog, that Ivo van Hove’s theatrical realisation of Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ was about to hit Manchester. Ten days ago it was on stage at The Lowry, as part of the city’s International Festival…