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oldtimer

Full Member
Sep 27, 2005
3,186
1,801
82
Oxfordshire and Pyrenees-Orientales, France
ICE,STEEL AND FIRE British Explorers in Peace and War 1921-45 By Linda Parker (Helion and Co 2013)

Madame bought this for me as an extra 80th birthday present on line as the title looked like something that would interest me.

As the title suggests, it deals with a group of men who were in the prime of their lives in the 20s and 30s and who would go on to see active service in WW2. Some of the names became well-known and will be familiar to many on this forum. To my surprise, I found that I had known one of them quite well but in a diiferent context. When I was a schoolboy in the 1950s, Lancelot Fleming was Bishop of Portsmouth and as such had a a close relationship with my school. He was a familiar figure at school events and I remember him as a kindly, elderly churchman. In this book I discovered that, in his youth, he had been a polar explorer working as a geologist on several expeditions and as such was highly regarded by his peers.

If you followed TeeDee's thread on British male role models, any of the characters featured in this book would qualify. Although this is a very recent book and written by a woman, it is reminiscent of the sort of book schoolboys of my generation were encouraged to read as a guide to what an earlier generation of men expected of us when we took our place in a man's world.

The accounts of expeditions are fascinating and the many appendices give interesting insights into the provisioning, equipping and organisation of smaller scale expeditions of the period.
 

lou1661

Full Member
Jul 18, 2004
2,179
196
Hampshire
I have just finished Pack and Rifle by Philip Holden for the umpteenth time. On the pile of next in line books includes Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe and The Biggest Estate on Earth by Bill Gammage. both look fascinating reads. My copy of Fire to Fork by Harry Fisher gets well looked at too!
 

dean4442

Full Member
Nov 11, 2004
599
59
Wokingham UK
I'm currently just over half way through the main novel of "The Deathworlders", it's sci fi but with a really good load of twists. I started reading it from a science page I follow, free download as well so needs to be read on an electronic book. Link here; https://deathworlders.com/
 
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MartiniDave

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Aug 29, 2003
2,355
130
62
Cambridgeshire
Like others on here I'm reading/browsing more than one book.
Fiction - I've just finished the later in the "Jack Reacher" series by Lee Child.
Factual - Paul Kirtley's Axe book, Mor's "Bushcraft" & Les Stroud's "Survive"
 
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Tvividr

Nomad
Jan 13, 2004
256
38
Norway
www.gjknives.com
Same thing here - more than one book at a time...
Just finished a Norwegian book a few days ago ( "I kano fra Larvik til Nilens kilder" - by Reidar Teigen) about two young men (23 yrs old) paddling a canoe from Larvik in Southern Norway, to Sweden and Denmark and down through the channels through Europe and up through the Nile and all the way down to Mombassa in Kenya. Started in late 1952 and took them some 18 months to finish. The canoe is actually at the maritime museum in Larvik not too far from where I live. Always wanted to go and have a look at it, and now that I have finished the book for the fourth time, it is about time...

Currently started reading these two:
"Commando - A Boer Journal of the Boer War" by Deneys Reitz
"The Sheltering Desert" by Henno Martin
I have read these before, but they are worth a read again every few years. Title say it all for the first one, and the Sheltering Desert is about two young Germans who were against the war (WW2) and avoided internment by the British by hiding in the Namib desert. Living really primitive all the time.
 

Robson Valley

Full Member
Nov 24, 2014
9,959
2,664
McBride, BC
Watching, really. A 21 video series which applies to very rough-out kits of parts for carving Tlingit halibut fish hooks. I bought 2 kits of parts. The hooks are paleo, technically very complicated geometry and very effective.

I have the 2 arms pretty much done for kit A and I've started on kit B. ******* left hand cramped so bad I had to stop.

I can't help but wonder if the hooks might work for Atlantic halibut of the UK coast. This isn't 500 hooks on a longline with bait.
The Tlingit people are away up the Pacific Northwest coast with the Tsimshian on the mainland and the Haida out on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGoKk-JZWo1PnWqZE9otjkigvIIkgye5u
 
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Broch

Life Member
Jan 18, 2009
7,983
7,760
Mid Wales
www.mont-hmg.co.uk
Finished the Terry Pratchetts so picked up 'Bloody Eisteddfod' by a local author (Myfanwy Alexander) whom I have met - it's all based in this area, and to say it risqué is an understatement! :)
 

Nice65

Brilliant!
Apr 16, 2009
6,440
2,864
W.Sussex
I'm currently just over half way through the main novel of "The Deathworlders", it's sci fi but with a really good load of twists. I started reading it from a science page I follow, free download as well so needs to be read on an electronic book. Link here; https://deathworlders.com/
I’ll give that a go, cheers. I like that the ship is called Dandelion. :)

I’m reading Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. It popped up as a freebie on the Kindle. The series are lovely to watch, sort of BBC soporific and comfortable in an Antiques Roadshow or Great Canal Journeys kind of way.
 
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Tengu

Full Member
Jan 10, 2006
12,781
1,518
51
Wiltshire
The Buildings of England. WILTSHIRE

By N Pevsner (Probably the greatest Architectural scholar of the 20th century)

Which means I can now look at buildings I have seen all my life and not noticed;.

And Pevsner is a scream, Spent many years in Wiltshire and I hope to blog on him one day.

He was interviewed once, and asked what his favourite food was.

"Tinned spaghetti, its quick to eat"

Not exactly an outdoor man, but he spent a lot of time in walking all over.
 

Nice65

Brilliant!
Apr 16, 2009
6,440
2,864
W.Sussex
The Buildings of England. WILTSHIRE

By N Pevsner (Probably the greatest Architectural scholar of the 20th century)

Which means I can now look at buildings I have seen all my life and not noticed;.

And Pevsner is a scream, Spent many years in Wiltshire and I hope to blog on him one day.

He was interviewed once, and asked what his favourite food was.

"Tinned spaghetti, its quick to eat"

Not exactly an outdoor man, but he spent a lot of time in walking all over.
Fascinating county. Not so much buildings, but I get your interest. I use the A303 fairly often, and having watched a programme about it a couple of times, find myself wanting to take a turning off to see more of the areas history.


Not sure if you saw another programme about the pits dug around Stonehenge? Pretty much makes it the biggest prehistoric structure in Britain.

 

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