Television industryObituaryTerence AlexanderA suave and urbane actor, he found fame in the TV show BergeracTerence Alexander, who has died aged 86 from Parkinson's disease, was best known for his role as Charlie Hungerford in the BBC TV detective series Bergerac. As well as an actor, he was also a quirkily amateur numerologist.
Even at the time of his first stage appearance - on 23 December 1939 in Harrogate, as the young journalist in JB Priestley's The Good Companions - he was forming the view that 23 was, for him, a mystical number. Read More...
The ObserverFictionReviewThe 1966 Aberfan disaster triggers flashbacks a young man has tried to suppress in a thoughtful debut novel that offsets tragedy with uplift
Time’s passing has done little to dim the horror of the 1966 Aberfan disaster, in which thousands of tonnes of coal waste thundered down a mountainside and engulfed a Welsh junior school. The sentiments it so powerfully evokes inform the opening of Jo Browning Wroe’s debut novel, A Terrible Kindness, which begins as hope of finding survivors dwindles. Read More...
Crossword blogCrosswordsAlan Connor demystifies the devices used in cryptic crosswords. This time: the sneaky apostrophe
Welcome back, you cryptic-curious!
Inspired by a recent comment, this week’s instalment of cryptic tips looks at the apparently unobtrusive apostrophe.
Newcomers to cryptics: remember that a cryptic clue consists of a definition of the answer (indicated in bold in the examples below), followed by some wordplay that gets you to the same answer – or wordplay followed by a definition. Read More...