Author: Dr Richard Petty

Florentia Lady Sale by Richard Thomas Bott, 1844   What remained of Napoleon on St Helena was about to be ceremoniously shipped back to France aboard the blacked-up frigate Belle-Poule – ‘Le Retour des Cendres’. A devastated Europe had yet to reconfigure itself. In between times, ‘Great Britain’ was busy validating itself, massively fuelled by … Continued

  JOHN BULL taking a Luncheon: -or- British Cooks, cramming Old Grumble-Gizzard, with Bonne-Chére,  James Gillray 24 October 1798   The 29-year-old General Bonaparte was not quite ready to burn himself in his own flame. With his citizen army, he had trounced the Austrian Empire, but he was now rather too much of a public … Continued

The Nightmare, Henry Fuseli RA 1781 “… in the night time, when she was composing her self to sleep, sometimes she believed the devil lay upon her and held her down, sometimes that she was choaked by a great dog or thief lying upon her breast, so that she could hardly speak or breath, and … Continued

Chou Valton.  Jacques-Henri Lartigue 1932 ^ …Your loveliness goes on and on, yes, it does When you go on your summer vacation You go to Juan-les-Pins With your carefully designed topless swimsuit You get an even suntan on your back and on your legs And when the snow falls you’re found in St. Moritz With … Continued

“I am going to die in the saddle.” Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell (1921-2011) On one of his luckier days, Howard Hughes, the free-wheeling film mogul, chanced upon one Jane Russell, a feisty and strong-willed 19-year-old starlet from Bemidji, Minnesota. Being able to do whatever he wished in his own studio, Hughes cast Russell in his … Continued

“Time himself is bald and therefore to the world’s end will have bald followers.” The Comedy of Errors, I.ii   Will Petty is a remote antecedent, son of a clothier, close friend of Oliver Cromwell, mathematician, inventor of statistics, professor of anatomy, physician, a founder fellow of the Royal Society, eventually finding favour with the … Continued

  Having binned Enid Blyton on going to boarding school aged 6, I took up with Buchan, Doyle, Household and Haggard for murder and mayhem – with Baroness Orczy for glamour and sex. It was no less than The Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy Blakeney himself, who introduced me to the horrors of tobacco – he … Continued

For openers, we have COVID vaccines – a choice or three, but not at our discretion. We are, indeed, lucky to have what is on offer, but do remain a touch cynical – none have been adequately tested and tried. At least the brief phases 0 and 1 of clinical trials did not harm anybody, … Continued

It should not be any sort of surprise that a new COVID variant has arrived rudely on our doorstep to mess up our sacred Christmases. Although the coronavirus family is not as speedy a mutator as the influenza virus, COVID already has 20,000 close cousins known to science. Whether or not this one, succinctly dubbed … Continued

Smallpox epidemics ravaged the world for millennia. By the 1950s, it is estimated that 50 million cases occurred each year, up to 60% dying from the disease. “Variolation” against smallpox originated in China using old scabs from healing pustules applied to newly scarified skin. This practice spread to India over the next 200 years, and … Continued