c o l o p h o n

On the parachuting of some unfortunate pigeons into occupied France, 1917:

“There were inevitably some mishaps. Some of the pigeon parachutes failed to open. Others landed many miles off target. One group of pigeons landed on a hungry section of the Canadian Corps who ate all but one which was sent back to base with a ribald message of thanks.”

“Remarkable myths grew up behind British lines. Best mischievously informed one curious general that he had just succeeded in crossing pigeons with parrots, thus producing super-pigeons capable of reporting by word of mouth. The general not merely failed to see the joke but allegedly reported Best to GCHQ for ‘having divulged most secret information’.”

– Christopher Andrew, Secret Service.

I’ve just come across the National Archives’ collection of Public Information Films, which you can watch online. Highlights are the terrifying Protect and Survive, and Halas & Batchelor’s Charley in New Town.

Bye bye Monday.

[Also, by way of compare & contrast with P&S: Archer Productions’ Duck and Cover (1951)

CRITICAL MASS: The Book Critics’ Circle blog has been posting a weekly list of some high-profile critics’ recommended reading. Good stuff.

—in BAH Parritt, The Intelligencers: The History of British Military Intelligence up to 1914
(Hay-on-Wye, 26.03.2008)

“A former bongo drummer, drug smuggler and brothel-keeper, Lord Moynihan had by then ceased his controversial activities to turn informer for the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).”

Malta, Rome, Singapore
Perth, Adelaide, Sydney,
Nandi, Honolulu,
San Francisco,
London, Rome,
Malta.
Spring, 1970

—Anthony Burgess, from the introduction to The Novel Now

—in Elizabeth Bowen’s A World of Love,
(Henry Pordes, Charing Cross Road, 10.03.2008)

“To read a review that begins in the first person singular is like watching someone propose a toast to himself at a party thrown for another man”

–Wyatt Mason

“Now that I have returned to the Decalogue for the first time since childhood, the voice of the deity strikes my ear as that of a petulant and charmless tyrant who is covering up his own ineffectual promises with bluster, the kind of humourless boss who is given to loud renditions of ‘My Way’ at the annual office party.”

— Marina Warner, ‘Wrestling With the Oldest Rules’, in Signs and Wonders

“This leads me to the Higher Editing. Take of well-ground Indian Ink as much as suffices and a camel-hair brush proportionate to the inter-spaces of your lines. In an auspicious hour, read your final draft and consider faithfully every paragraph, sentence and word, blacking out where requisite. Let it lie by to drain as long as possible. At the end of that time, re-read and you should find that it will bear a second shortening. Finally, read it aloud alone and at leisure. Maybe a shade more brushwork will then indicate or impose itself. If not, praise Allah and let it go, and ‘when thou hast done, repent not.’ The shorter the tale, the longer the brushwork and, normally, the shorter the lie-by, and vice versa. The longer the tale, the less brush but the longer lie-by. I have had tales by me for three or five years which shortened themselves almost yearly. The magic lies in the Brush and the Ink. For the Pen, when it is writing, can only scratch; and bottled ink is not to compare with the ground Chinese stick. Experto crede.”

— Rudyard Kipling, Something of Myself (1937)