By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
First published in the Pall Mall Gazette on 4 January 1895, ‘The Flying Man’ is not one of the best-known short stories of the British science-fiction author H. G. Wells (1866-1946), but the tale has some intriguing elements. It’s about a British soldier in Asia who escapes from a ledge (and extreme thirst) by improvising a parachute; this gives rise to legends of a ‘flying man’ among the local people.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
There are a number of myths about the word ‘marathon’ and its origins. Let’s take a closer look at the story of how an ancient battle gave us the word for a long-distance race.
A marathon is a race run over a distance of 26 miles and 385 yards. The 385 yards are a curious detail and one I’ll return to later in this article. But let’s start with the reason why such a race is known as a ‘marathon’.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The late Terry Pratchett once wrote that if cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. ‘Style,’ he went on. ‘That’s what people remember.’ Pratchett himself was a cat-lover who was surrounded by his family pet when he died in 2015. Many writers have been cat people. But what about songwriters?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Even among diehard Sherlockians, the nine-book ‘canon’ of Conan Doyle-authored Sherlock Holmes books has surprisingly few out-and-out classics that all can agree on. The first two novels, A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, show Doyle still finding his feet with the two central characters, and the mysteries themselves are in some respects short stories stretched out to novel (or perhaps only novella) length.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
What connects the well-known proverbs ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread’, ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’, and ‘to err is human, to forgive divine’? The answer is that not only do we have the same man to thank for all three, but he originated them all in the same poem, and he did so when he was only 21 years old.