John Welford
Bio
I am a retired librarian, having spent most of my career in academic and industrial libraries.
I write on a number of subjects and also write stories as a member of the "Hinckley Scribblers".
Stories (501/0)
The Bathers, Asnières, by George Seurat
Georges Seurat (1859-91) died at the age of only 32, but during his short life he was able to effect a revolution in art that moved painting forward from Impressionism into what was dubbed “Neo-Impressionism”. His painting “The Bathers, Asnières”, although the artist’s first major work, is widely regarded as the marker of that revolution.
By John Welford3 years ago in Geeks
William Topaz McGonagall
The world is full of very bad poets, so the crown of the “best” (or should that be the “worst”?) has to be bestowed with care. However, there must be few people who, having been introduced to his poetry, would deny that honour to William McGonagall.
By John Welford3 years ago in Poets
Fanny Burney
Frances (or Fanny) Burney was born on 13th June 1752 at King’s Lynn in Norfolk, the third child of Charles Burney, a well-known musician who wrote a celebrated “History of Music”. Although she was a slow starter, she became a voracious reader and an early writer of stories, plays and much else. However, on her 15th birthday she burnt everything she had written up to that date.
By John Welford3 years ago in Geeks
Gallienus, Emperor of Rome
Gallienus is one of the Roman Emperors whose reputation has undergone considerable change over the centuries. Early historians regarded his reign as “one of the most ignoble and disastrous in the history of Rome” and himself as “indolent, profligate and indifferent to the public welfare” (to quote Smith’s Classical Dictionary) but modern research has credited him with some successes and qualities during a very difficult period of Roman history.
By John Welford3 years ago in FYI
Gannet
The gannet (Sula bassana, or Morus bassanus) is a truly remarkable bird, for several reasons. It is the largest seabird indigenous to the British Isles, at up to 95 centimetres (37 inches) in length, and this is where up to 70% of the world’s population of gannets breed. The gannet is not the same species as the Cape gannet (Morus capensis), although they do have many features in common.
By John Welford3 years ago in Petlife
The Monk's Tale, by Geoffrey Chaucer
The Monk’s Tale is unusual among Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in several respects. For one thing, it is interrupted by another pilgrim before it can be completed, something it shares with Chaucer’s own Tale of Sir Thopas, which had been told not long before.
By John Welford3 years ago in Geeks
Hadrian, Emperor of Rome
Emperor Hadrian, who ruled the Roman Empire from 117AD to 138AD, is best remembered for ordering the construction of the wall in northern England that bears his name. His reign was largely peaceful – due in no small measure to Hadrian’s constant vigilance for signs of trouble on the Empire’s borders.
By John Welford3 years ago in FYI
Ndabaningi Sithole
Men of the cloth do not often feature in struggles for black liberation or emancipation, although notable examples were Dr Martin Luther King and Rev Jesse Jackson in the United States. In Zimbabwe, Ndabaningi Sithole was such a man. A gifted orator, Ndabaningi Sithole was the brains behind the foundation of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) in 1963.
By John Welford3 years ago in The Swamp
Nancy, in Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
“Oliver Twist” is the most melodramatic of Charles Dickens’s novels and is peopled by stock characters who would have been familiar to those acquainted with the popular theatre of the day, Dickens being a lifelong enthusiast of drama and the theatre.
By John Welford3 years ago in Geeks