Literature

The Curious Origins of Tweedledum and Tweedledee

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Interesting facts about the surprising history of Tweedledum and Tweedledee

Who is being described? Born in the north-west of England near Manchester, he was a literary man who was also noted in his day for his interest in science and mathematics. In terms of physical appearance, he was known for being particularly tall, considerably taller than average. He gave us Tweedledum and Tweedledee, pioneered a system of code-writing, wrote one of his most famous works for a young girl, and appears to have had an interest in the occult.

The above may sound like a description of Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, but in fact

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Five Fascinating Facts about Ezra Pound

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Fun Ezra Pound facts, including his unusual middle name and his even weirder fashion sense

1. Ezra Pound’s middle name was Loomis. Or rather, one of his middle names. Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was born in Idaho in 1885; a childhood friend was Hilda Doolittle, who would become known as an imagist poet under the initials ‘H. D.’ (the initialism was Pound’s own PR idea) and, later, as a novelist. Pound even asked Doolittle to marry him in 1907; she declined (as he was reportedly seeing two other women at the time, it’s not hard to see why!).

Pound would be the driving force behind the literary movement known as imagism in the years 1913-15, and would also contribute to modernist poetry himself with a number of famous poems, among them the two-line imagist masterpiece ‘In a Station of the Metro’, the long poem Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), and the very long poem The Cantos (Pound’s life’s work, and over 800 pages in full). The Cantos is a vast work, described by Hugh Kenner as the chronicle of Pound’s own life, and written over a period of nearly half a century. (It was described by Pound, in an early draft, as a ‘rag-bag’.)

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25 Weird and Interesting Little-Known Phobias

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25 rare phobias – how many of these do you suffer from?

It’s well-known that a fear of spiders is ‘arachnophobia’, but what’s a fear of wasps? What’s the name for a fear of remaining single forever? We’ve been scouring the reference books for some less well-known phobias and have compiled the definitive list. Although some of the following phobias are pretty weird, we like to think that many of the phenomena they describe are quite common.

Koinoniphobia is a fear of being in a room full of people.

Deipnophobia is the dread of dinner-parties.

Scopophobia is a fear of being stared at.

Medectophobia is the fear that one’s penis is visible through one’s clothes.

Automysophobia is a fear of being dirty.

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Interesting Facts about Biggles

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Some interesting trivia about the Biggles books and their author, Captain W. E. Johns

The Biggles books, detailing the adventures of fictional pilot James Bigglesworth, were hugely popular in the mid-twentieth century. Ever since the young pilot’s first appearance – in a story called ‘The White Fokker’ in 1932 – he has been delighting and entertaining readers. His creator, Captain W. E. Johns (1893-1968), was a prolific author and wrote over a hundred Biggles books in total.

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