Have we all forgotten the first half of the century? 1922

You should never mess with Woodehouse's aunts

Everything was broken and changed but wasn't the Edwardian Age, before the destruction, seen as the high point

I think the First World War rather dominated things for that cohort

Akin the political art of faking sincerity

She is an example of how tastes can change over time. Then I wanted music to be stripped back and voices cracked or gruff, ie "authentic". Now I am open to beauty

His event at the Derby Book Festival was also one of the best. His openness and humanity shone through

One of the general rules is to always distrust heavy discounts. This is doubly true for whisky

Something about that era of male tv interviewers. The Edna O'Brien doc Blue Road had some examples of men feeling they had to confront her. The only one I liked was Melvin Bragg being unable to respond when confronted with a list of the in adequacies of men

Apart from whisky nonsense. If you haven't already seen it I would thoroughly recommend The Ballad of Wallis Island

So a new introduction would have been a very good idea

What is now forgotten about this book is that it was written as part of a series edited by James Leslie Mitchell (Lewis Grassic Gibbons), who had to cudgel an unwilling Gunn to write the book and provided ideas for the structure as part of their negotiations

And they didn't mention the subtitle?

Didn't recognise the Neil Gunn edition and so looked it up on Amazon. Why would they mess with the subtitle? 'A practical and spiritual survey' is elegant and implies a third party distance but 'a spiritual journey from glen to glass' is too contemporary, too woo

It's odd how some distilleries get all the love and others are rarely mentioned e.g. newer distilleries get a lot of praise but Wolfburn is hardly ever part of the conversation

Whoever we are, when we become obsessed with something, whatever it is, there is much scope for weirdness

Birdwatching and whisky are not mutually exclusive. The RSPB has two reserves. One on the OA and the other on Loch Gruinart.

He also used literary techniques. To show the scale of Moses' works, instead of just saying he built a lot, he used the lists in Homer as an example and listed all the parkways Moses built so that the rhyme and repletion made you feel the magnitude

It has a sweep and a grandeurs that it s more than a biography. The key is that to show the working of power he wanted to show its effect on the powerless. Make the reader see and feel those effects. It is a novelistic ambition

In the twentieth century 'The Great American Novel' as a thing. Men with big egos puffed out their chest and proclaimed their status. But I now realise that the great American Novel was not a novel at all. It was a work of non-fiction. It is The Power Broker by Robert Caro

have branched out to make comparisons with aeropress and v60 (ps my standard method is aeropress)

Is Connor Gallagher the new Steve Perryman - primarily defensive, running around a lot? Bill Nicholson always looked to me like a man of the 1950s ie someone who had been through the war and carried the experience with him. Interesting to speculate on the effect of the war on post-war football

It is amazing how such colossal scandals can disappear from public consciousness once time has passed

In 1989 Westminster Council rehoused people they didn’t want living in marginal wards into asbestos riddled tower blocks on the Elgin estate. Background for this weeks Silent Witness

Your voice is fine. It sounds a bit like Helen Lewis' and her voice has certainly not hindered her attempt to appear on all known podcasts

I am so pleased by this news Matt. I have faith hat you have found a place where your expertise can flourish

Or as someone once said: don't try to think outside the box until you have tried to think within it

Kendal Whisky Festival is a great event but it has challenges. This year Storm Darragh was not so bad but last year's snow dump left me stuck on a hill unable to go any further and for the first time being envious of 4x4s

I came to Saroyan through Jack Trevor Story - a now forgotten name , but one I remember when in traffic and repeat to myself the title of one of his novels 'I sit in Hanger Lane'

Lapwings are a bit showy but I spent quite a lot of time watching redshanks mooching around