Walking The South Downs Way. Cliff's South Down walk, 12th June 2009. My thoughts and comments, my learning and my views.    more »

Future Britain – Fifty Years Time – A personal view. My starting place is to compare what life was like at fifty year intervals from 1809, pick the main threads and extrapolate those changes into the future. 1809 – World population 1 Billion – Napoleonic Wars, 1812 Russia   more »

Learning something new. I recently read three books: 1 the secret life of words (by Henry Hitchins), how English became English. 2 the map that changed the world, the tale of 'Strata Smith' by Simon Winchester, the story of the creation of the science of geology, 3 The Professor and the Madman, the story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary,   more »

ThisGreatWorld™, The Threats to “English”. What are the threats to ‘English’. Probably the biggest threat comes from people who deliberately give a new meaning to a word or phrase. The whole concept of George Orwell’s ‘1984’ with a usage denoted as ‘NewSpeak’.   more »

ThisGreatWorld™, The English Language – 3. My favourite words, phrases, quotes or excerpts etc: Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun;   more »

ThisGreatWorld™, The name comes from an acronym of Christian names; Thomas, Terrence, Tamara, Tabitha, Tanya, Tessa, Terry, Theresa, Tim, Titus, Tina, Toby, Tom, Tony, Tracey, Trevor,   more »

So why celebrate ‘English’. ‘English’, is a unique phenomenon. So how did it come about? What caused it to become what it now is? Personally I love the diversity, the richness of our society and I love the freedom of speech, the freedom to criticise, the freedom to have your own opinions.   more »

ThisGreatWorld™, The English National Day of Celebration. Should we award ourselves a National Day to celebrate this ‘Englishness’ and ...   more »

ThisGreatWorld™, The English People. So now to look at the people who are ‘English’. Our starting point is that there are virtually none of original dwellers left, they, the Angles, were driven into Wales etc. We have been successively invaded up until 1066. From then on the concept of England has developed.   more »

ThisGreatWorld™, The English Language – 2. Almost 1 million words 988,968 words reasons why the world loves English (According to the article in The Sunday Express issued on the 23rd April 2006)   more »

ThisGreatWorld™, The English Language – 1. The origins We can fairly state that the language started with King Edward VI in about 1550, possibly when he commissioned the Book of Common Prayer and he decreed that it had to be written in English.   more »