Martin Fone's Blog, page 23

Whitley Neill Navy Strength London Dry Gin

One of the undoubted success stories of the ginaissance is the ubiquitous Whitley Neill brand which now boasts a range of twenty-three gins, distilled in the City of London Distillery, the first and still only distillery to operate in the heart of the metropolis in 200 years. A welcome addition to their range is their Navy Strength London Dry Gin, boasting a no nonsense ABV of 57%.

A marketing term coined in the 1990s to sell high-strength gins, the roots of this type of gin lies with the British navy’s practice of storing barrels of gin below deck near stores of gunpowder. If there was a leak, the high alcohol content meant that the gin was still flammable and the gunpowder could still be used. Technically, though, spirits that are true Navy Strength have an ABV of 54.5% while spirits with an ABV of 57.142% or above, whilst they may be labelled Navy Strength, are English Proof.  

Whether English Strength or Navy Strength, gins of this strength are not to be messed with, packing quite a punch. Invariably, the navy strength version of a gin uses as its base the distiller’s standard London Dry Gin but alters the calibration of botanicals and reduces the dilution after distillation. These gins are normally particularly juniper intensive.

Juniper is the star of the show here, accompanied by some faithful botanicals that have stood the test of time, coriander seed, angelica root, liquorice root powder, dried orange peel, and dried lime peel. On the nose the juniper and citric elements are particularly dominant while in the glass, the zestiness of the lime, the subtle layers of spice, the sweetness of the liquorice, and the brightness of the orange combine well to enhance the peppery earthiness of the juniper.   

Surprisingly, given the strength of the spirit the gin does not louche upon the addition of a premium tonic. The aftertaste is long, a mix of citrus and herb, rounding off what is an elegant and complex drink. I have not always been one of Whitley Neill’s greatest fans but this one hits the mark for me.

What is more, for a navy strength gin it is reasonably priced and available in certain supermarkets as well as the usual gin stockists. The bottle is the standard Whitley Neill shape, proudly bearing the coat of arms of the Corporation of London, but it is distinguishable from its confreres because the glass is coloured turquoise.

Tied Up In Tinsel

A review of Tied Up In Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh – 250204

Having been impressed by the previous couple of novels in Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn series, this, the twenty-seventh and originally published in 1972 is back to what I have found to be her norm, sadly underwhelming. We are back on familiar ground, a Christmas gathering at a country house at which Alleyn’s wife, the painter Agatha Troy is in attendance, which ends up with a murder and Alleyn just back from an important assignment in Australia rides in to sort it all out.

The premise upon which the novel is set is promising enough. In order to deal with the shortage of domestic staff in the late 1960s, Hilary Bill-Tasman has hit upon the novel solution of employing former convicts, each of whom has been convicted of committing murder. Agatha has been commissioned to paint Hilary’s portrait and as her hubby is away as usual, she accepts an invitation to extend her stay to enjoy the Christmas celebrations.

A sense of unease descends upon the house when a series of pranks are played on and anonymous letters sent to the guests, each in their own way drawing attention to the way each of the members of staff had committed their murders. The highlight of the Christmas celebrations is the arrival of a Druid-like Father Christmas resplendent in a golden beard, a part intended to be played by Colonel Fleaton Forrester aka Uncle Flea, but due to him having one of his turns, his long-time servant Moult steps into the breach. Moult then disappears, never to be seen again.

It is convenient that on the lawn of the house is a structure made of snow and ice representing a tomb of one of the Bill-Tasman’s ancestors, inside of which is a case. There are no prizes for guessing where the body is hidden. Moult has had a stormy relationship with the rest of the domestic staff and Hilary’s fiancée, Cressida Tottenham, is openly concerned by being surrounded by former murderers – so much for rehabilitation of criminals – and is keen to get rid of them, two sets of motives that might conjoin to result in murder.

One of three photographs found in Moult’s possessions gives the game away and the culprit is easy to spot, although the motive, perhaps, less so. To be charitable, the story raises questions about birth, class, social acceptance, and what it is like to be a criminal and the issues someone seeking to follow the straight and narrow but I found the whole thing too one-paced, too lengthy in setting up the premise and once I had seen the solution to the puzzle, too leisurely in coming to its conclusion.

On the positive side, there are some excellent and eccentric characters, and Agatha Troy is given the opportunity to show her inner strength, her determination and her vulnerabilities. The narrative is enlivened with some set pieces including Agatha’s walk through the countryside, the description of the Christmas festivities – it is astonishing how children at the time were able to contain their excitement about receiving presents until well into the evening of Christmas Day, would that it were so today! – and the search in a storm. These were all well done but not enough, in my opinion, to rescue a book that seemed to me overlong, a good idea poorly executed.

I was surprised to learn that this was one of two Marsh’s books to be nominated for an Edgar award, perhaps testament to her longevity and the paucity of rivals in 1972. Perhaps Ngaio Marsh and I are simply ill-matched.

Soap Operas

The first episode of the BBC’s longest running TV soap, EastEnders, aired on February 19, 1985 and it still commands an audience for its four half-hourly episodes a week. The genre began on the radio, the first daytime serial considered to be a soap opera being Painted Dreams which was first aired on WGN radio Chicago on October 20, 1930. It was broadcast during the day and, as its audience was made up predominantly of housewives, the storylines were aimed at them.

It prompted other Chicago-based radio stations to launch their own dramas, usually fifteen minutes long, providing “background Noise” for women as they went about their household tasks. To hook the audience in, each episode would end on a cliffhanger that would be picked up in the next episode.

The first network radio serial was Clara, Lu, ‘n Em which first on NBC Blue Network at 10.30pm on January 27, 1931. Created by three women, Isabel Carothers, Louise Starkey, and Helen King, it was light and comedic, focusing on the daily lives and gossiping of three Midwestern housewives. On February 15, 1932 it moved to a weekday time slot, broadcasting five times a week and garnering large audiences of women.

The reason they became known as “soap operas” is twofold. Firstly, like operas their modus operandi was to develop intricate and highly dramatic plots. As for the soap part, US radio stations were commercial animals ands relied on advertising revenue for their existence. They began to look for sponsors who had products to sell that were aimed at their target audience.

As the audience for these dramas were predominantly women and their principal occupation was running the home, among the first major sponsors were companied who sold cleaning products, such as Procter & Gamble, Lever Brothers, and Colgate-Palmolive. So many of the sponsors were soap manufacturers that these dramas became associated with their sponsors and became known as soaps.

As more families began to own television sets, soaps made the move to the new medium. The first soap opera to be broadcast on television was These Are My Children, which first appeared on NBC on January 31, 1949. Broadcast live from WNBQ in Chicago it went out five days a week in fifteen minute episodes but it suffered from a small budget and the show ended on March 4th that year.  

Short as its lifespan was, These Are My Children was ground-breaking, although it was not well received by critics. The magazine Pathfinder bemoaned the fact that “last week television caught the dread disease of radio – soapoperitis”, while Variety considered it to have “no visual interest”. Nevertheless, the genie was out of the bottle and soap operas largely created by women with women in mind were soon commanding large audiences and attracting considerable advertising revenues.

Forget the critics, this was the language that commercial broadcasters understood.

They Found Him Dead

A review of They Found Him Dead by Georgette Heyer – 250202

The third in Heyer’s Inspector Hannadyne series and originally published in 1937, we find ourselves back in familiar territory. A party to celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Silas Kane, an industrialist, reveals a number of tensions amongst the assembled guests, many of whom are introduced at bewildering speed by Heyer. There is little time to pause for breath and the relationships are hard to grasp initially, although, in fairness to the author, things become clearer as the story develops.

Once the majority of the guests, Silas goes for his customary walk along the cliff edge, even though it is misty. His body is found at the bottom of the cliff the following day. It looks like a tragic accident, although the precocious Timothy Harte, fed on a diet of American gangster films, believed that the strained atmosphere at the party was guaranteed to lead to murder.

Clement Kane, Silas’ cousin, inherits the estate and to the horror of his elderly aunt Emily, he and his wife, Rosemary, move into the house. Some weeks later Clement is fatally shot from outside the study, although, while everyone heard the shot, no one saw the culprit escape. To his surprise, the estate passes to Jim, Silas’ nephew, and two attempts are made on his life, once when his speedboat capsizes – Timothy had taken it out unauthorized at the time – and when the steering of his car is tampered with. As he had his fiancée, Patricia, with him, Jim was not travelling at his usual speed which saved his life.

After Clement’s murder Inspector Hannadyne aided by his usual assistant, Sergeant Hemingway, investigate. There are three main strands of motivation. Clement was in need for money to fund his wife’s extravagant lifestyle and Silas’ death was opportune. But why was he then killed? Perhaps it was at the instigation of his wife who could then elope with her lover, Trevor Dermott.

Silas’ business partners, Joseph and Paul Mansell, are in favour of a speculative Australian venture and pressure is being put on for a speedy decision by the fixer, Oscar Roberts. Both Silas and Clement were against the deal, especially as it was their capital rather than the Mansell’s that was at risk. Were they both removed to hasten the deal and was Jim’s unexpected legacy the reason why he too had to be eliminated?

The third strand is the Australian branch of the family, whom most of the Kane entourage had anticipated would inherit upon the deaths of Silas and Clement. Were their murders intended to expedite the inheritance and did Jim’s unanticipated inheritance imperil his life?

In truth, the plot is fairly simple and formulaic and it is relatively easy to work out who the culprit was, as a major clue is dropped around the halfway mark. The mechanics of Clement’s murder show a degree of ingenuity on the writer’s part and the police miss an enormous trick when they fail to search a water butt handily placed near the study as the murderer had to get rid of the gun in double quick time. What rescues the book for me is the characterization, Heyer producing several memorable figures who will remain with me for some time.

There is the wonderfully awful wife of Clement Kane, Rosemary, a self-centred, selfish woman who is sensitive to her nerves and openly has an affair. The book rather loses its shine when she fades from the narrative, only to be rescued by the force of nature that is Lady Harte, an intrepid explorer and would-be MP who has an unconventional approach both to life in general and motherhood in particular. Her younger son, Timothy, is another in the line of precocious boys that populate detective fiction, although older than the norm, who has a better appreciation of what is really going on than his elders. I also enjoyed his stepfather, Sir Adrian, who drifts through life exuding an air of debonair insouciance.

As a murder mystery it is pretty second rate, but the characters bring it to life.      

Marathon Man Of The Week

We could all do with a good news story and here’s one. 73-year-old Chris Terril from Wilmington in East Sussex has just set and quite unintentionally a new world record for the fastest marathon run on crutches.

A veteran of over 50 marathons needed a hip replacement after injuring himself playing cricket. Nevertheless, he decided to go ahead with his entry at the Brighton Marathon, completing the course in 6 hours 11 minutes and eleven seconds, more than thirteen minutes faster than the previous record.

It took until this February for the record to be ratified by Guinness World Record because they used the timings provided by the organisers. Chris’ comment after hearing the news was that if he had known there was a record to be beaten, he would have gone faster.

Wonderful!

PIN Code Of The Week

It is a test of both ingenuity and memory, the selection of a four-digit PIN code which is strong enough to baffle the least sophisticated of scammers and yet one that can easily be brought to mind in the panic of trying to access some vital app.

An anti-breach website has helpfully analysed more than 29 million four-digit PIN codes to reveal the most popular selections. Perhaps unsurprisingly but a tad worryingly, the most frequent selection “by a huge margin” is 1234 which is used by 9% of the people whose PINs were analysed. The second most popular is 1111, used by 1.6% followed by 0000 (1.1%).

Other favourites include years, with 1986 currently the most popular, or some combination of days and months such as 2512. Others have tried to be clever by scrambling 1234 into 1342, “so many, in fact”, the survey says, “that it is the fourth most popular code of all”.

Room for improvement, methinks.

Sing A Song Of Murder

A review of Sing A Song of Murder by Peter Drax – 250130

The last of six crime novels written by Peter Drax, the pen name of Eric Addis, was published posthumously in 1944 and has been reissued by Dean Street Press. Tragically, Addis was killed in action in 1941, mortally wounded in a German air raid in Alexandria. The unfinished novel was found in his papers and was completed by his wife, Hazel. I am always a little wary about novels that have been completed by another hand but I need not have worried here as Hazel Addis was an accomplished and published author in her own right and it is difficult to detect any joins. Perhaps the only clue is the long final chapter which sits oddly alongside the shorter, more staccato earlier chapters.

Drax specializes in gritty, realistic novels, recounting life as it really was rather than imaging a cosy world of country mansions, tea parties, and greedy relatives. It is also an account of a London that has long disappeared, its warren of grim streets wiped away by the bombing raids of the Second World War. His characters are people who scratch a living, always on the look out to earn a crust by utlising what skills they have, whether it be picking a pocket, driving a getaway car, forging a signature or just looking after stolen goods.

This collection of desperate men need a fixer, a man with the brains necessary to plan a robbery which will deploy some of their skills, and this is where Louie Patra comes in. He has recently chased a rival, The Rigger, from his patch, uses a waste paper business as his cover, and prides himself in the perfection of his planning, never having been troubled by the police. He is offered an opportunity too good to turn down by Hermann Zimmerman, to steal to order a collection of silver, Sheffield plate, early English glass, and ivories, owned by Kit Kimber.

While the initial robbery goes to plan, it all starts to unravel when The Rigger, tipped off by Spider, makes a reappearance and tries to grab the loot. One of Patra’s accomplices, Tooley, just out of prison, knocks The Trigger out and thinks that he has killed him. Patra, realizing that the man is still alive, finishes the job off, disposes of the body in a way that makes identification difficult, takes his revenge on Spider, but does not tell Tooley that he did not kill the man.

It is after a second visit to Kimber’s house to collect another objet d’art that events start to unravel out of control. It is all little details, some newspaper used to wrap glass, a lucky pig, a piece of a label from some clothing, that spin a web from which the principal characters cannot escape. The police, too, are flawed men, Haslet, pompous and prone to assumptions, and the down to earth, Leith, street-wise, dogged and determined. There are no flashes of deductive brilliance, simply trained men going about their business, following clues and leads and seeing where they end up and not averse to using methods that would be out of place in these so-called more enlightened times.

What impressed me about the book is despite its almost unremitting gloom and a spiral of events created by choices that are small but tellingly ill-considered, is that it is a story written with a profound sense of humanity and understanding. The portrayal of Tooley is masterful, a man struggling to come to terms with his release from prison, desperate for love and affection that his life is obviously bereft of, and pressed into service too soon. The overpowering pull of loyalty has a profound effect on the unravelling of Patra’s scheming.

It is not a murder mystery, more of a thriller, one that shows a fine understanding of the psychology of a group of people who, in their different ways, are trapped by their circumstances and, ultimately, unable to do anything about it. I have really enjoyed the Peter Drax series and would thoroughly recommend to anyone to explore.

The Father Of Nylon

It was the fabric from which the first flag planted on the moon in 1969 was made from. Now it has fallen out of favour because of its adverse environmental impact but for several decades during the mid-twentieth century, nylon was ubiquitous, used for clothing, bedding, and, of course, hosiery.

In 1927 the chemical giant, DuPont, launched a research programme into the possibility of producing synthetic materials by melting different organic compounds together, headed by Wallace Carothers. By the spring of 1930 the team had already synthesized two new polymers, neoprene, a synthetic rubber that was used during the Second World War, and a white, elastic, strong paste that was to become nylon.

In essence, nylon was formed by combining two carbon-based substances that created a solid at the point at which they met. When it was heated and pushed through tiny holes under pressure, it formed thin fibres which were then quickly pulled away and cooled. The result was filaments that were stronger and more resistant to heat and water than any other man-made fibre. On February 28, 1935 Carothers produced an example of the first wholly synthetic fabric, known as nylon 6.6.

How the fabric got its name of nylon is a subject of some controversy. Some claim that the original name was meant to be No-Run but to avoid a claim that might become a hostage to fortune, the letters were reversed and then morphed into nylon by way of nilon. Others believe it to be derived from the hometowns of the principal scientists who worked on the project, New York and London, while others suggest that it was an acronym of Now You’ve Lost, Old Nippon, reflecting the emergence of a credible rival to silk. Its name takes a similar form to another DuPont product, rayon, and the suffix might just be an arbitrary selection.

DuPont obtained a patent for the polymer in September 1938 and because of the complexity of the manufacturing process DuPont quickly were able to establish a lucrative monopoly. The first commercially available product using nylon was Dr West’s Miracle-Tuft, a toothbrush with synthetic nylon bristles, launched by the Weco Products Company of Chicago. However, the cash cow was to prove to be hosiery.

Silk stockings were all the rage in the 1930s but they were still expensive. The use of nylon meant that stockings could be produced more cheaply and they were more durable. They flew off the shelf and when the production of nylon tights was resumed after the Second World War women fought to get their hands on them.

As for Carothers, he never got to see the success of the product he had worked so hard over so many years to develop. A depressive, he swallowed a lethal cocktail of lemon juice and potassium cyanide on April 28, 1937. His death was widely reported in the States but he quickly slipped into obscurity, unlike his product.

Its strength and durability meant that it takes thirty to 40 years for deposited waste to degrade, and if incinerated toxic fumes and ash containing hydrogen cyanide are released. The production process produces nitric oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, as well as consuming large amounts of water. Washing nylon fabrics runs the risk of causing microplastic pollution. Unsurprisingly, therefore, in these more environmentally conscious times, we have moved on from the mass consumption of nylon, but it was  revolutionary development in its day.

The Coastline Paradox

On the face of it, it is a simple enough: how long is the coastline of the United Kingdom? The answer, though, is far from straightforward. Two of the most respected and renowned data sources come up with wildly different answers, the CIA Factbook putting it at 12,429 kilometres , while the World Resources Institute stating that it is 19,717 km. How can two respected authorities come up with an answer that has a difference of over 7,000 kilometres?

There are two factors at play. The first is the fractal dimension or “wiggliness” of the British coastline. Part of the charm of this island’s coastline is its proliferation of coves, inlets, peninsulas, which is self-evident when you study a map. It has a fractal dimension of around 1.25, not as high as Norway’s 1.52, but considerably greater than that of, say, Australia at 1.13 and South Africa at 1.05. What this means in layman’s terms is that the higher the fractal dimension the more irregular and jagged it is, making it more difficult to measure with any degree of accuracy.

The second factor is what is known as the coastline paradox. In essence, while it is relatively easy to measure with a high degree of accuracy a surface that is straight, the degree of accuracy being increased with the higher precision of the measuring device deployed, a jagged surface like a coastline poses an altogether different set of problems. Measuring in finer detail does not improve the accuracy; it merely adds to the total.

To illustrate the point, if we measure the coastline of Great Britain, the main island in which most of England, Wales and Scotland is situated, using units of 100 kilometres, the result is around 2,800 km. Using units of 50 kilometres, the result increases by approximately 600km to 3,400km. Even if digital technology is deployed to create a digitized representation of the coastline of Great Britain and its surrounding islands, one using 2.282 million individual vertices produces an answer of 11,023 miles while one just using 2,282 reveals the answer as 3,876 miles, shrinking the coastline by over 7,000 miles.

The problem of varying coastline lengths was first spotted by Lewis Richardson, who while researching the possible effects of border lengths on the probability of war in the early 1950s, noticed that the Portuguese reported the length of their border with Spain as 987 km while the Spanish recorded it as 1,214 km.

The commonly used method of estimating the length of a border was to lay out straight-line segments of an equal length (l) on a map or aerial photograph with each end on the boundary. Richardson discovered that the sum of the segments increases as the common length of the segments decreases or, to put it plainly, the shorter the ruler, the longer the border. In certain circumstances, Richardson found, if l approaches zero, the length of the coastline approaches infinity.

The Richardson effect spawned a seminal paper, printed in Science in 1967, by  Benoit Mandelbrot, How long is the coast of Britain? His conclusion was that there is no definitive answer and it all depends on how you measure it. The obvious takeaway from that is that any statistic about the length of a country’s coastline or border is meaningless without knowing the unit of measure.

Bread Ban (2)

In order to maximise the supplies of wheat and to minimize wastage, the Director of Food Economy, Sir Arthur Yapp, launched a campaign to reduce the amount of bread eaten. Participants in the scheme would receive a badge with the slogan “I Eat Less Bread” and a certificate. In addition, householders were advised to eat slowly and only when they were absolutely hungry, to follow the custom of the poor and buy bread b weight rather than by the loaf and to limit their meals to two courses for lunch and three for dinner.

While these measures had some effect, they were voluntary and had some unanticipated consequences. A black market emerged for flour and its substitutes, people began to hoard ingredients and a marked increase in malnutrition was observed as the poor, whose diet contained a large proportion of bread, struggled to replace it. The government, concerned with the cost of bread, not only launched a bread subsidy in September 1917, which lasted until March 1921 and cost the Exchequer £162.5 million, but also effectively nationalized mills to control the cost of grain.

In May 1917 the government took firmer action, introducing the Bread Order. This required bread to be at least twelve hours old before it could be sold, effectively banning the sale of freshly baked bread, with fines to be levied, or worse, on those who broke its provisions.

The logic behind the Order was that clear. Bread that was a little stale was thought to be less appetising than fresh bread, although, according to The Times it was more nutritious, and more difficult to cut thinly so less would be eaten. The authorities reckoned that bread consumption would reduce by 5%. There were some other benefits, as bread would no longer need to be baked in the early hours of the morning, saving on fuel used for lighting and making baking more convenient for housewives who had taken over the responsibility from the menfolk who had been conscripted.

Many people were prosecuted for breaking the Bread Order. A particularly severe sentence, according to a note in the National Archives, was passed on a London tailor by the name of Louis Horowitch in October 1917. Found guilty of buying “new bread”, he was fined £50 or faced 51 days in prison. After an outcry the Home Office stepped in, granting him a pardon on January 28, 1918, calling the sentence, even if he was guilty, “inexcusable” to be levied on a “poor man”.

Harsher measures, though, were soon introduced. Lord Rhondda, the newly appointed Food Controller, introduced controlled prices in July 1917, fixing the price of essential foods, and setting up a network of local food control committees to register retailers, recommend variations in pricing, and to maintain the drive on food economy. By January 1918 sugar was ration and by April meat, butter, cheese, milk, and margarine had been added to the list. Ration books were distributed in July and households had to register with a local butcher and grocer.

Meat continued to be rationed until 1919 and rationing did not finally stop until 1920.