Self-Immolation Duc-Style May 20, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
When Beachcombing first courted Mrs B he used to play elaborate ‘wind-ups’, trying to convince his darling of the impossible. Perhaps his favourite was the time he ‘explained’ how the widow of an Indian immigrant in Britain had decided to burn herself suttee-style on the funeral pyre of her husband, in Parliament Square. There had, [...]
A Book about Spitting April 28, 2011
Posted by Beachcombing in : Actualite, Contemporary
Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York University Press 1998) Beachcombing was never going to let a book about spitting in history pass him by. And so when he heard that Jerry Lembcke had given over two hundred pages [...]
The last elephant charge in history? July 25, 2010
Posted by Beachcombing in : Ancient, Medieval, Modern
Beachcombing has had several very useful emails from readers on the last cavalry charge in history. So many useful emails, indeed, that he has decided to risk repetition and ask a parallel yet no less beguiling question – ‘when was the last elephant charge in history?’ Elephants, after all, were the tanks of the [...]
