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Here’s a few more photograph comparisons of Ealing, West London, this time of Northfields Avenue. Again the old photos are from Britain in Old Photographs and the new ones I took a few weeks ago. These all show the junction of Mayfield Avenue and Northfields Avenue.
This shopping parade (above) was built in 1904 and Northfields avenue was named after the Great North Field that it was built through. It was again the arrival of the tram on the Uxbridge road that caused the area around this parade to be developed. The top photo was taken c. 1907 and the photo below c. 1913.
Here’s a new collection of short stories published in the US, Sherlock Holmes in America, where Holmes and Watson cross the Atlantic to solve crimes. It did make me immediately think of Stephen Fry in America, almost as though intrinsically English figures are being shipped out to the US just to see how they get on. The stories are by American writers and although there’s likely to be some Americanisation, I’m sure the original English style of Holmes won’t be lost and if that is the case, then I reckon I’m going to really enjoy this book. It will certainly open up a whole new world and culture for Holmes and Watson to be contrasted with.
It hasn’t been published in the UK yet, but here it is on American Amazon. This is an extract from a Monsters and Critics review:
Holmes and Watson in America. Original short stories. A literary gem? Elementary, of course! Sherlock Holmes makes his American debut in this fascinating and extraordinary collection of never-before-published crime and mystery stories by bestselling American writers. The world’s greatest detective and his famous sidekick Watson are on their first trip across the Atlantic as they fight crime all over nineteenth-century North America. From the bustling neighborhoods of New York City and Washington, D.C., to sunny yet sinister cities like San Francisco on the West Coast, the world’s best-loved British sleuth will face some of the most cunning criminals America has to offer, and meet some of America’s most famous figures along the way.
Yep, today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, born on 12th February 1809 and died on 19th April 1882. He made the discoveries that now form the basis of our understanding of the natural world, his most significant being Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, which has paved the way for the study of genetics, integral to modern medicine. I don’t know if ‘Darwin Day’ is going to become a regular thing, or just for this anniversary, but hopefully it will continue!
There have been plenty of celebratory events and programmes on recently, including the epic Sir David Attenborough documentary on Darwin, which was on 1st February. It was great in summing everything I kind of knew about Darwin’s theories, but wasn’t sure about, and it ended with a really moving montage of clips of Attenborough with different animals over his many years of broadcasting. It’s still available on iPlayer, and there’s a page with clips and information about today’s radio programmes on Darwin on the BBC website here.
Another thing I really enjoyed on the documentary was the 5 minute summary of evolution, a pretty difficult to achieve generally, but so understandable that I think it ought to become the standard means of explaining the theory of evolution.
