What makes these seven women unique in the world today?

livii shares my insane fascination and writes about it at length here. There's not a lot of us about who appreciate her.

So, on to the Third Doctor books, starting with three Dicks efforts of varying quality, and a good one by Malcolm Hulke; all covering stories first broadcast in 1970.

( 6) Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, by Terrance Dicks )
( 7) Doctor Who and the Cave Monsters, by Malcolm Hulke )
( 8) Doctor Who - the Ambassadors of Death, by Terrance Dicks )
( 9) Doctor Who - Inferno, by Terrance Dicks )

( Northern Ireland and Doctor Who )

I've headlined this post by referring to Liz Shaw, but in fact she doesn't come across particularly well on the printed page and, given my childhood memories of the first two of these books, I was surprised by how much I liked Caroline John in the TV role when I watched. I am beginning to spot a pattern where the brainy companions (Zoe and Liz) don't transfer well to the novelisations, whereas the screamy ones (Victoria, Polly and I expect Jo) actually come over rather better.

5) About Time: The Unauthorised Guide to Doctor Who, 1985-1989

This is the last (so far) of the About Time series of guides to Doctor Who, covering not only all the Seventh Doctor series and all but the first of the Sixth Doctor stories, but also the 1999 TV movie, the misconceived 1993 Dimensions in Time piece, The Curse of Fatal Death and the two Peter Cushing movies. Tat Wood is the main credited author (Lawrence Miles being absent this time, but with "additional material" by Lars Pearson and a defence of The Two Doctors by Robert Shearman).

As in previous volumes, Wood's sarcastic yet affectionate humour makes it a good read, even though it's the period of the programme's history I probably know least well. There are some brilliantly sardonic one-liners which I was regrettably unable to refrain from reading aloud to anyone who would listen. The explanatory essays are as good as ever. Slightly disappointed with the editing - there seem to be a lot more typoes than usual, and some other structural glitches as well. But any serious fan needs to get this.

4) Decalog 2: Lost Property, edited by Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker

A collection of ten DW short stories (actually one has no Doctor, but does have Sarah Jane, Mike Yates, K9 and the Master). As usual, of varying but mostly good quality; I hope any of the other contributors who read this will forgive me for favouriting the two Fourth Doctor / Leela stories, one by Tim Robins and set on a commercially exploited Mars, the other by Pam Baddeley and setting settlers against indigenous people on a planet with its own bizarre legal culture. Apart from that, I enjoyed all the rest except the one with Zoe and Jamie and the one with Peri and the peculiar timeshare.

3) Second Part of the Ingenious Knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Well, I finally managed it: the second half of Don Quixote, having read the first part three years ago. It hangs together rather better than the first part - much less episodic, one senses that unlike his characters the author knew which way things were going. There is some nasty business with a Duke and Duchess who set our heroes up for a series of practical jokes; but Sancho Panza acquits himself very well from it all. In the end, Quixote's neighbours get him to just give it a rest, and the world is obviously a poorer place as a result. (Also he then dies, to reinforce the point.)

One recurrent theme of Volume II is that Quixote and Panza keep on bumping into people who know them not only from Volume I (published ten years before) but also from the seventeenth-century equivalent of fan fiction; in an early chapter, Panza is prevailed upon to explain a couple of continuity glitches from the previous volume, and there's a repeated complaint that the fanfic writers have got the leading characters completely wrong. (Tat Wood makes an obvious parallel in About Time Volume 6, which I have also been reading this weekend.)

Anyway, that's another off my list of classic literature and 2008 reading resolutions. It didn't blow me away, to be honest, in the same way that Proust has been doing; but it is one of those books everyone should try and get through.

1) The Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

I must admit I wouldn't normally read a book like this; it came free with the Palm T|X back in November 2005, and I had pretty much laid that gadget aside since I got a Blackberry with my new job last year. Oddly enough, it has been the Hugo nominees that pushed me back to the Palm; the best way that I found of reading the nominated short fiction available was to convert via Mobipocket to Palm format. So I came back to this epic novel as well.

Well. It's a tale of a memorably dysfunctional family - not just the standard horrors of conflicting gender roles and alcoholism, but also dead babies in the freezer and rapists eaten by a convenient tiger. The emotional dynamic between the narrator, his twin sister, his brother and their parents is convincing and compelling, and gripped me through to the end.

Oddly, the least believable element is not so much the grand drama of events in South Carolina but the narrator's conversations (and eventual fling) with his sister's psychiatrist in New York. The other slightly peculiar element, as with The Red Badge of Courage (though not as bad), is that the rednecks (including the narrator) seem suspiciously articulate.

Glad I read it. Mostly.

I'd already read probably the best Jamie / Zoe novel, Doctor Who - The Invasion, by Ian Marter, and also the worst, Doctor Who and the Dominators, also oddly enough by Ian Marter. Four of the other six are fairly standard efforts by Terrance Dicks, but the other two present points of interest.

( 35) Doctor Who - The Wheel in Space, by Terrance Dicks )
( 36) Doctor Who - The Mind Robber, by Peter Ling )
( 37) Doctor Who and the Krotons, by Terrance Dicks )
( 38) Doctor Who - The Seeds of Death, by Terrance Dicks )
( 39) Doctor Who - The Space Pirates, by Terrance Dicks )
( 40) Doctor Who and the War Games, by Malcolm Hulke )

So, that's it for the Second Doctor novelisations. I finished up my read-through of the First Doctor novels by regretting that almost nobody manages to capture Hartnell's performance on the printed page. Troughton (who perhaps put less of his own personality into the part than any other Doctor before Davison) is easier to pin down, the visual aspects of his performance more easily described. Of the other regulars, I felt that Victoria gains most, and Zoe loses most, on the printed page. Perhaps it is easier to inject some gravitas into the rather two-dimensional Victoria than to convey how stunningly cute Wendy Padbury is as Zoe.

The best of the Second Doctor novelisations are John Peel's Doctor Who - The Power of the Daleks, Terrance Dicks' Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, Peter Ling's Doctor Who - The Mind Robber and Ian Marter's Doctor Who - The Invasion, with honourable mentions to Doctor Who - The Evil of the Daleks, the other three early Season 5 books, and Doctor Who and the War Games. None is quite as good as the best of the First Doctor novelisations, though.

Since I am reading these on my commute and am taking a long weekend chez scattyme in France, it'll be a while before I do the next lot.

Just because I'm reading the novels doesn't mean I am neglecting my duties to the original classic television series (though I imagine I will finish the novels first). But I realise I've fallen behind a bit in recording my reactions to them since the start of last month.

( The Brain of Morbius: Fourth Doctor and Sarah reprise Frankenstein )
( The Pirate Planet: Fourth Doctor, Romana I and K-9 do battle with Douglas Adams )
( Warrior's Gate: Fourth Doctor, Romana II, K-9 and Adric at the junction of the universes )
( Arc of Infinity: Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa meet the future Sixth Doctor and Omega )
( The Two Doctors: Sixth Doctor and Peri meet Second Doctor and Jamie and do battle with the Sontarans )
( Time and the Rani: newly regenerated Seventh Doctor and Mel deal with renegade Time Lady )

So, in summary, The Brain of Morbius and Warrior's Gate are real classics, and The Two Doctors held up better than I had expected; skip the rest.

Jeff Dudgeon alerts me to the Dublin Review of Books, "a free quarterly online journal whose main object is the publication of clear and thoughtful analysis based on recently published books". Various articles to browse through at my leisure, many from the perspective, more visible in intellectual discourse than in election results, of the Irish Left. I particularly enjoyed two pieces from the current issue:

Tony Brown on Irish Euroscepticism. I know Tony as a very nice guy involved with the Institute of European Affairs in Dublin, where I have spoken a couple of times. Here he lets his passion out, exposing the mendacity of the anti-EU cause in Ireland. I recommend it especially to British friends to see how the issue plays out in the neighbouring jurisdiction. However, it should also be noted that the anti-EU forces have lost every time in Ireland, if sometimes only on the second round. (Also I notice that the article, despite being in the Dublin Review of Books, doesn't actually cite any, er, books. But it's still very much worth reading.)

Brendan O'Leary on Paul Bew's Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006. Again, an author I know on a subject I know; I first met Bew at the departmental parties our family would host, long before he got my father's old job in Belfast let alone his recent peerage, and O'Leary has greatly flattered me in print. O'Leary's article here attempts to forensically dissect Bew's new blockbuster on the recent history of Ireland, but ends up making me want to buy and read the book, to see what I think of it myself. O'Leary feels that Bew attaches too much strength to the importance of indigenous factors and not enough to external (ie British) influence on events: I'm not sure all of his points are totally convincing, but he makes them very entertainingly. (A minor irritation is that you have to download O'Leary's footnotes in a standalone Word document; in this day and age, that is simply unprofessional.)

Anyway, a site to keep watching. Lots more that I enjoyed browsing through, but as I said, these were the two articles that particularly grabbed me.

33) J. R. R. Tolkien: a biography, by Humphrey Carpenter

( My father's thoughts )

34) J.R.R. Tolkien: Architect of Middle Earth, by Daniel Grotta

( Don't bother. )

What is the basic equipment you would need to invest in to enjoy the benefits of Wii Fitness?

For those who haven't seen but care (and if you are in that category, you should really be reading james_nicoll which is where I got this from):

Best Novel: The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon (born 1963; first Nebula or Hugo)
Best Novella: "Fountain of Age", by Nancy Kress (born 1948; fourth Nebula, also has a Hugo)
Best Novelette: "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", by Ted Chiang (born 1967; fourth Nebula, also has a Hugo)
Best Short Story: "Always", by Karen Joy Fowler (born 1950; second Nebula)

I note that 1) Once again, at least one of the Nebulas has gone to a first-time winner; there has never been a year without at least one first-time Nebula winner; 2) two out of four went to women; the Nebulas are more gender-balanced than the Hugos; and 3) two out of four were born between 1942 and 1951, whereas the average number of Nebulas won in previous years by authors aged between 57 and 66 is almost exactly 1, further evidence for my assertion that authors of that cohort win twice as many awards.

The winning novel is the only one of the nominees I had read (or indeed intend to read), and I enjoyed it. "Fountain of Age" is on my reading list for the Hugos; I've already read "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", and wouldn't be surprised if Chiang pulls off the double again, though I have not yet read any of the other Hugo nominees in that category.

Other Nebula/SFWA stuff:

Nebula for Best Screenplay: Pan's Labyrinth
Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
Damon Knight Grand Master for 2008: Michael Moorcock
SFWA Service Award: Melisa Michaels and Graham P. Collins
Author Emeritus: Ardath Mayhar (who I hadn't heard of)
SFWA President: Russell Davis (whew!)
SFWA VP: Elizabeth Moon
SFWA Secretary: Mary Robinette Kowal
SFWA Treasurer: Amy Casil
SFWA Eastern Regional: Bud Sparhawk
SFWA Overseas Regional Director: Ian Whates

32) The Cornelius Quartet: The Final Programme , A Cure for Cancer, The English Assassin, The Condition of Muzak, by Michael Moorcock

Another classic of speculative fiction, which I have now read: the complex tales of Jerry Cornelius, his family, his allies and his enemies. It's difficult to call it a novel, or a collection of novels; the first book perhaps comes closest to having a conventional plot, but the second and third books in particular are rather free of the contraints of linearity. You have to really let the word pictures wash over you without expecting the narrative to behave as we are used to plots behaving. There's a consistent sort of post-Empire awareness behind the scenes, which sometimes bubbles to the top: in one passage in the fourth book, various English groups are presented as if native tribes in some far-off colony. Often such experiments seem just boring and self-indulgent, but this kept my interest.

( a long note about Doctor Who )

I've celebrated my birthday on livejournal in past years by googling up relevant links to my date of birth. This year, WikiPedia has become so dominant that I can assemble an impressive bunch of dates just from that source alone. (It also of course provides a handy index for just how famous the individuals in question are, given the number of links involved).

Born the same day as me:

Glen Jacobs, aka Kane, wrestler and actor. There are Wikipedia articles about him in 20 languages. I am totally baffled by this.
Marianne Jean-Baptiste, actress and musician who has inspired articles in the Wikipedias of a mere eight languages.
Rainer Salzgeber, Austrian skier (three languages)
Ariel Sorín, Argentinian chess grand master (three languages)
Florbela Oliveira, Portuguese actress (two languages)
Pavel Eduardovich Lion/Павел Эдуардович Лион, better known as Psoy Galaktionovich Korolenko/Псой Галактионович Короленко, also known as khaloymes , Russian musician and Slavic scholar (two
languages)
Trevyn McDowell, South African/British actress
Tim Moore, member of the Michigan state legislature
Bruce Cruse, Australian cricketer
Andy Schmetzer and Walt Schmetzer, American twin soccer players
Mike Masters, another American soccer player
Monte Warden, an American country musician who features only in the German Wikipedia.
Ralph Kistner German footballer and now trainer at OSC Vellmar.
Stefan Ludwig, German politician, mayor of Königs Wusterhausen.
Klaus 'Klausi' Merk, German ice hockey champion goalkeeper
Susanne Brantl, German actor and singer
Alexander 'Sascha' Draeger, German actor and dubbing artist whose voice credits include Clark Kent from Lois and Clark, and Dipsy from the Teletubbies.
Eva Cobo, Spanish actress who figures only in French Wikipedia
Yves Cotten, Breton graphic novelist and artist
Leszek Kisiel, Polish economist
Bertrand le Guern, French/Polish businessman
Alf Kåre Tveit, Norwegian footballer
Oleh Volodymyrovych Salmin / Олег Володимирович Салмін , Ukrainian politician
Toomas Tõniste, Estonian sportsman and politician
呂孔維, whose name can apparently be written Lu Kongwei or Lu Kung wei, Taiwanese comedian

Amy Biehl (d. 1993), anti-apartheid activist
Robbie Millar (d. 2005), Northern Irish restaurateur

and, fictionally
Grace Adler, as in Will and Grace.


Launched the day I was born

The Twenty-Fifth Hour, film starring Anthony Quinn (release date from French Wikipedia page)
The Leicester Riders, Britain's oldest basketball club
La Fondation nationale Reine Fabiola pour la Santé Mentale, Belgian charitable foundation (now swallowed up by the King Baudouin Foundation)
Grajski biki/Tvrđava siledžija/Stronghold of Toughs, Yugoslav/Slovenian film
HMS Hermione
The MS Taras Shevchenko's Black Sea career
San Marco 2, Italy's second satellite


Died the day I was born

Jean Alexandre Barré (born 1880), as in Guillain-Barré syndrome. Articles in five languages.
W.J.A. 'Dave' Davies (born 1890), rugby player
Roman Wilkosz (born 1895), Polish artist
Siegfried Charoux (born 1896), Austrian sculptor
Nicolae Cernescu (born 1904), Romanian chemist
(probably) Michael J. Estocin (born 1931), US Vietnam war naval pilot

See a gallery of some of these people and things here.

(See previous birthday posts for 2007, 2006, 2005, and an old collection of links on my website.)

These five Who books are all from 1967-68 stories, but from different ends of the chronology of publication. The first of these was in fact the very last of the official novelisations produced by Target/Virgin, in 1993; the other four were among the first five Second Doctor books, published between 1974 and 1978 by Target. Having been underwhelmed by my last clutch of Who books reviewed, I'm happy to report that all of these are good stuff.

( 27) Doctor Who - The Evil of the Daleks, by John Peel )
( 28) Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, by Gerry Davis )
( 29) Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen, by Terrance Dicks )
( 30) Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors, by Brian Hayles )
( 31) Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, by Terrance Dicks )

So that's it for the Jamie/Victoria combination. While Victoria, apart from in Doctor Who and the Tomb of the Cybermen, is the screamiest girl companion since Susan, the affectionate interactions between the Tardis crew are almost (but not quite) as entertaining on the page as on the screen.

All five of these books are medium good, and four of them are important as the perspective through which fans of my age first encountered the Second Doctor. The best of them is certainly Doctor Who and the Web of Fear, which wraps up one line of continuity (the Yeti and Travers) while setting up another (the Brigadier and UNIT). But all are worth adding to the serious Who fan's library. (The same can't be said for the other two novels of this run, alas.)

Having very much enjoyed the first three volumes of Brian Michael Bendis' Alias series (1, 2, 3), I now discover that if I want to buy the fourth and last volume I will have to pay roughly twice what I paid for the other three combined.

Is it so much better than the others? Or just rarer, due to some quirk of the production and distribution process?

Five novelisations of Second Doctor stories, all originally broadcast in 1967. None of them specially good, and a couple which are pretty dire, but all very quick reading for my commute.

( 22) Doctor Who - The Highlanders, by Gerry Davis )
( 23) Doctor Who - The Underwater Menace, by Nigel Robinson )
( 24) Doctor Who and the Cybermen, by Gerry Davis )
( 25) Doctor Who - The Macra Terror, by Ian Stuart Black )
( 26) Doctor Who - The Faceless Ones, by Terrance Dicks )

In summary, your life will not be incomplete for lack of having read any of these! These are the five books featuring Ben, Polly and Jamie in the regular cast; it is remarkable how much more interesting Polly is as a character than the other two. Shame she didn't stay longer.

If it's OK for Salisbury Cathedral to put members of the congregation on their team, would it have been OK for the Ministry of Justice to put prisoners on theirs?

(Not that they needed it.)

The sole elected representative of the Newtownabbey Ratepayers Association, Billy Webb, has announced that he is joining the Alliance Party. Given that the press officer listed on the Association's website, former councillor John Blair, has also (re)joined Alliance, I reckon that's it for one of Northern Ireland's smaller (and more harmless) political groups. Alliance has not been doing badly for new recruits recently.

Thank you all, you lovely people!

The source of my dismay is here; you'll see that I omitted the personal reflections which some of you (reasonably) felt could be read as a bit snarky, and also that I slightly misquoted in my previous post (the 'extraordinarily' was superfluous). Anyway, you lot have reassured me that there is nothing really to worry about, so I shall forget about it.

Is this review "extraordinarily peevish"?

21) Understanding English Place-Names, by (Sir) William Addison

Picked this somewhat randomly off the shelves this morning. It does exactly what it says on the tin, breaking England down into regions and looking at the place names as a whole and particular individual cases of interest. It brought home to me how little of England I know despite my five years in Cambridge. It is interesting that so few English place names are Celtic in origin, apart from the obvious parts of the west and a few pockets farther east; also surprising that the Normans did not leave a heavier footprint on toponymy. I remain puzzled by the way that the Danelaw failed to really translate into later political divisions, but the book assured me that the pattern of Norse settlement based on place names is very visible. Anyway, an absorbing, quick read.

20) Doctor Who - The Power of the Daleks, by John Peel

John Peel continues his run of excellent Who books with this, the first story of Patrick Troughton's incarnation of Doctor Who. It is a favourite of mine anyway - I cannot understand why fannish opinion generally prefers the later Evil of the Daleks - but Peel, equipped with David Whitaker's original scripts (retrieved, apparently, from his ex-wife's attic) and benefiting from some editorial decision to give him 250 rather than 125 pages to tell the story, has done an excellent job.

On reflection, it's also because this is a relatively unusual Dalek story, presenting them not as a rival galactic empire to us humans but as in some way a dark reflection of our own desires about ourselves. The only other televised story that comes close to doing that is Robert Shearman's Ninth Doctor story.

Anyway, Peel turns a good TV story (as far as we can judge, since it is one of the lost ones) into a good novel. An encouraging start to my reading up on the Second Doctor.

19) True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey

This was recommended to me by someone about six months ago, I think after I was a bit unimpressed by the same author's Oscar and Lucinda. It really grabbed me; I was only vaguely aware of the story of Ned Kelly, but Carey has given him and his country (the Australian state of Victoria in the 1870s) a resounding voice. The story is dramatic and moving; the underlying theme of the book is the injustice by which Kelly and his family, and their community, were shut out of having their voice heard, and had to submit to the lies and distortions of their more powerful enemies. Kelly becomes a robber and a murderer, but only after the authorities have made him so; he is motivated by love and loyalty for his family, and comes across as flawed but in his own way noble. I believe this won the Booker Prize? A decent choice if so.

And so I reach the end of the first phase of this insane project, the last two novelisations featuring William Hartnell's incarnation of the Doctor.

( 17) Doctor Who - The Smugglers, by Terrance Dicks )
( 18) Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet, by Gerry Davis )

So, that's it for the First Doctor novelisations. The best ones are David Whitaker's original Doctor Who and the Daleks, Ian Marter's Doctor Who - The Rescue and Donald Cotton's Doctor Who - The Romans, with honorable mentions to the other four by those three authors, John Lucarotti's Doctor Who - Marco Polo and the three Dalek novelisations by John Peel. None of them is quite the real thing though: Hartnell's performance was so strongly visual that it is impossible to catch on the printed page. The only way to really get a flavour of early Who is to watch it.

On to the Troughton era now...

16) The Great War: Breakthroughs, by Harry Turtledove

I got this somewhat randomly several years back in preparation for the WorldCon panel I chaired with Turtledove as one of the participants. I didn't manage to read it then, though; bounced off the first couple of chapters. I have now struggled through it as part of my ongoing programme of clearing my backlog of unread books.

The book is, it turns out, the third of a trilogy about an alternate history war ending in 1917, where the US and Germany are fighting a bitter trench combat against Britain/Canada, the Confederate States of America fifty years after their victory in the War of Secession, and France. All the action takes place on or near the North American continent, so the fact that I didn't read it before our panel on the future of Europe is no great loss. The major one of the "Breakthroughs" of the title is the penetration of Confederate lines on the Kentucky/Tennessee front by the US army's new battle machines (known as "barrels" rather than "tanks" in this world), under the command of septuagenarian George Armstrong Custer, as a result of which the Confederate front collapses, the US re-occupies Washington, annexes chunks of Canada and declares Quebec independent, and the war and the book both end.

Turtledove has about a dozen viewpoint characters, telling the story from the point of view of the military and civilians affected by the war. US president Teddy Roosevelt pops into the narrative now and then, and the defeated CSA president appears at the end, but on the whole this is the story of the little people. It is detailed and well worked out, but didn't quite grab me as much as I was hoping. I very much enjoyed Turtledove's Hugo-winning novella "Down in the Bottomlands", and wonder if the discipline of the shorter form enables him to concentrate quality rather better than in a trilogy of 650-page books.

Three good ones this time, though whether they represent two or three broadcast stories is a matter of opinion!

( 13) Doctor Who - The Myth Makers, by Donald Cotton )
( 14) Doctor Who - Mission to the Unknown, by John Peel )
( 15) Doctor Who - The Mutation of Time, by John Peel )

I'd recommend all three of these. Next for me, since I've already read the Dodo novelisations, is Doctor Who - The Smugglers.

12) A History of Africa, by J.D. Fage

Since I changed jobs at the start of last year I've been working with two African groups, the Polisario Front of Western Sahara and the government of Somaliland. Part of my motivation for getting this job was that I wanted to do more on Africa; I feel that if you're working in international relations and not working on Africa you need to ask yourself why not. But I confess my overall knowledge was not very extensive, and while I've deepened my understanding of the Western Sahara and Somaliland situations in particular, I wanted some more general information. artw had picked up this book years ago somewhere, and so I worked through it over the last week.

I found it a pretty fascinating guide to the interlocking ebb and flow of kingdoms and empires across the continent up to the colonial period. The particular strength is in West Africa south of the Sahara, which I have been long fascinated by despite knowing very little about it, but he's good on the rest as well. Two things I was particularly interested to read about: i) The first massive external colonialist intervention, based on greed and collapsing in mismanagement and ignominious withdrawal, seems to have been the Moroccan destruction of the Songhai empire based on the Niger river in 1591, which resulted in the impoverishment of the whole of West Africa. ii) The rape of southern central Africa ("Bantuland", as Fage calls it) by slave traders at the start of the nineteenth century, and its subsequent easy penetration by European colonialists, was mainly due to the exploratory, trading and colonising efforts of Sayyid Said, the Sultan of Oman, who got so engaged with his successful African trade that he moved the seat of his Arabian sultanate to Zanzibar.

However, it's probably not the best place to start for today's reader; published in 1978, it therefore misses the crucial transitions in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and covers less than the first half (in many cases not even the first third) of most countries' post-independence history. The unresolved Rhodesia and apartheid questions I think also make it more difficult for the author to assess the colonial and post-colonial eras in the round, and of course the Portuguese and Spanish had only just disengaged. Also, rather surprisingly, the Cold War is not mentioned at all. I've been doing a bit of digging and am interested to see John Reader's Africa: A Biography of the continent coming up in recommendations; has anyone out there read it?

Well, thanks to everyone who ticked boxes in yesterday's poll. I found the results interesting.

First off, if you can read this, you probably also have Greek, Cyrillic, and Hebrew characters installed. Probably also Arabic, but I somehow screwed up the poll between Arabic and Armenian. I ought to have also tested for more exotic Cyrillic characters: the Macedonian/Serbian њ, the Altai ҥ, the Kazakh/Kyrgyz ң, the Siberian ӈ and the Sami ӊ. Next time.

Next in order are a clutch of South Asian scripts. I was surprised that both Thai and Tamil were a nose ahead of Devanāgarī, which is surely used by a lot more people than either of the former two. After Devanāgarī, Gurmukhī and Gujarātī are level pegging (as is, from a slightly different part of the world, the much less widely used Georgian), followed by Kannada and then Telugu (which is level with two scripts related to Arabic - Syriac and Thaana), and then Malayalam.

After that the four big East Asian scripts - the Japanese Hiragana and Katakana, and phonetic and standard Chinese - if you have one of these you probably have all four.

( more )

For the funny n's, it's not very surprising that everyone can see ñ, ń, ɲ, ɳ and ŋ. I am slightly surprised that not quite everyone could see the perfectly respectable Czech/Slovak letter ň and the Latvian ņ, and that equally many can see the pretty bogus ṅ, ṇ and ṉ (OK this last is used by two actual languages but one is spoken by only 4000 people and the other apparently by only 20). Likewise, just behind, the perfectly genuine Lakota ƞ is level pegging with the bogus ṋ. Almost 90% of you can see ǹ as well, even though I haven't found a language that uses it.

It is a shame that the glorious n̈ (as in Spın̈al Tap) has not been more popular among typesetters. But I'm surprised that as many as a third of you could see ᶇ, n with a hook, and that a quarter of you could see ᵰ, n with a niddle tilde. It shows that people who work on fonts find it easier to grapple with the more bizarre and less used Latin-based letters than with real scripts used by millions of people.