This passage comes from the epilogue to Timothy Zahn 's novel, " Star Wars: Thrawn ." When Thrawn had been in exile from his homeland and serving in the imperial navy for some years, and had become an admiral, he sent his friend Eli Vanto to the Chiss Ascendancy to work with his old friend and former commanding officer, Admiral Ar'alani.  Effectively Thrawn and Eli Vanto had been exiled in opposite directions. Thrawn gave Eli Vanto his journal, and the passage on Friendship which he reads here is taken from that journal.  

Following on from this morning's post about the Grand Old Lady, HMS Warspite, here is another account of a British warship armed with 15 inch guns.  However,  HMS Roberts wasn't a battleship, she was a monitor - a specialised shore bombardment ship designed to get the 15 inch inch guns which could flatten any target on earth much closer to shore.

The original trilogy consists of 1)  The White Mountains  (1967)  Link:  Tripods book 1, The White Mountains, by John Christopher: Amazon Kindle Store 2)  The City of gold and Lead  (1967) Link:  3)  The Pool of Fire  (1968) Twenty years later John Christopher added a prequel, 4) When the Tripods came (1988)   Many years ago, as a pre-teen, I found a copy in a school library of " The White Mountains " which was the first volume of John Christopher's "Tripods" trilogy. I read it avidly, then located the second and third books at the city library and read them avidly too. In 1984 and 1985, two seasons of a television series were broadcast which covered the first two books of the trilogy. Sadly a third season which would have covered the events of the third and concluding volume of the story, " The Pool of Fire " was cancelled, proving that state corporations like the BBC are capable of making decisions as bad as the most notorious ca...

HMS Warspite , affectionately known to Royal Navy sailors from Admiral Cunningham down as the " Grand old lady, " was at the heart of the action in two word wars, often under the fiercest attack, never defeated. She had fifteen battle honours, more than any other ship. Her 15-inch guns were lethally effective and one of them scored the longest-range battleship-to-battleship hit in the history of naval warfare - a hit on the enemy flagship which made the opposing admiral order his whole force to withdraw. This is the story of the 15-inch guns which provided HMS Warspite and a whole generation of Royal Navy capital ships with their main armament and why they were the most successful naval guns of the 20th century.

An extra music spot this week, one of our contributors had posted this clip from the original Pink Panther film (1963) and more than sixty years later it is still both a total earworm and visually entrancing. Be warned that if you click on the video below and watch and listen to it, this tune may well be repeating yourself in your head for weeks. Look carefully at the background and you will see the film's main protagonist played by David Niven enjoying the performance; a great actor but he probably didn't have to act very hard! Also a great comic performance by Peter Sellers as the bumbling French detective, Inspector Clouseau, initially one of the two people in the room who isn't paying attention to Fran Jeffries but he soon gets dragged into the act. The character was brought back for the subsequent Pink Panther films such as "A shot in the dark." Fran Jeffries (May 18, 1937 – December 15, 2016) was an American singer, dancer, actress, and model. He...

Hat tip to Dr M.F. Khan for posting this story of wartime heroism on X.  here . The picture is from the archives of the Imperial War Museum. "In 1943, Paris - a woman sits in a Gestapo interrogation room, her feet bleeding, her body broken. The officers across from her know she's holding secrets. Names of British agents. Locations of resistance safe houses. Intelligence that could dismantle entire networks across France. They've already started the torture. Her toenails are being removed, one at a time. Soon they'll use heated irons on her back. They'll lock her in darkness for weeks. They'll promise her life in exchange for just one name. She's a 30-year-old mother of three. Not a soldier. Not a spy by training. Just a French-born housewife who was living quietly in England until Hitler's armies swallowed her homeland. That's when Odette Sansom made a choice that most of us will never have to make. She left her three daughters behind and volunteere...

The Grand Admiral's staff once showed him a this reconstruction of a group of eight dancers performing an 18th century dance to music composed by Handel, one of the greatest composers of that era, with both the chamber orchestra and dancers dressed in period costume. They asked him how he would defeat a navy from such a society. After watching the clip Thrawn replied that this was a society which structured life like a piece of clockwork or a game played by elaborate but fairly rigid rules. " If you are stronger, " he said, " Play the game largely by their rules: you will win, and they will surrender and as long as you honour the terms of the surrender, so will they. " " But if you are weaker, do what they will not expect. Break the rules, perhaps by breaking their line of battle. They will not be able to quickly devise a response. " They showed him an account of Rodney's tactics at the Saints and one of Nelson's at Trafalgar. " Like thi...

"A Knight of the Dragon Academy 3" by Michael Dalton and Eliza Hawk was published last week. As the title suggests, the third part in a series: the authors have finished pretty much all the initial storylines so they could leave it as a trilogy but have also left open the possibility of developing the series further. Lnks to the amazon pages to order these stories A Knight of the Dragon Academy eBook : Dalton, Michael, Hawk, Eliza: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store A Knight of the Dragon Academy 2 eBook : Dalton, Michael, Hawk, Eliza: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store A Knight of the Dragon Academy 3 eBook : Dalton, Michael, Hawk, Eliza: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store Author Michael Dalton described this series as "Pern by means of the Medicis" It does indeed have distinct echoes of Anne McCaffrey's "Pern" series except set in a society more like Renaissance-era Venice and Italy in an age of religion and a world of fantasy rather than being set in the future on an alien...

 Well, here is the answer. " Paraskevidekatriaphobia " is an irrational fear of a date. Such as an irrational fear of Friday the 13th.

The Empress of Otherworld (2017) by Corey Michael Dalton and Bryland Sutton is a comedy fantasy novel, mainly for children of all ages, which features characters from L Frank Baum's " Wizard of Oz " stories, from Lewis Carrol's " Alice in Wonderland, " from J.M. Barrie's " Peter Pan " and some original characters, with some additional ideas more than a little reminiscent of C.S. Lewis's Narnia. If you can imagine that someone had brought Wonderland, Oz, and the world of Peter Pan together into a common story in the same way that the authors of the American TV fantasy drama series " Once upon a time " brought lots of children's storis together, you have a fairly good idea of what "The Empress of Otherworld" is like. The first line, which I'm not going to quote to avoid a spoiler, skewers Hap, the central character as memorably as C.S. Lewis skewered the central character of " The Voyage of the Dawn Treader ...

Many years ago, as a pre-teen, I found a copy in a school library of " The White Mountains " which was the first volume of John Christopher's "Tripods" trilogy. The original trilogy consists of 1) The White Mountains (1967) 2) The City of gold and Lead (1967) 3) The Pool of Fire (1968) I read it avidly, and as the second and third books were not to be found in either the library at the school where my Mother taught and where I had found it while waiting for her, nor that of my own school, I located them at the city library and read them avidly too. In 1984 and 1985, two seasons of a television series were broadcast which covered the first two books of the trilogy. Sadly a third season which would have covered the events of the third and concluding volume of the story, " The Pool of Fire " was cancelled, proving that state corporations like the BBC are capable of making decisions every bit as disastrous as big private companies like Fox, Disney and P...

  This is a particularly appropriate question for today. What irrational fear is referred to by the following word, paraskevidekatriaphobia? An appropriate prize (it isn't something nasty) will be sent to the first person to post the correct answer in the quiz thread comments on either of the two blogs on which this quiz post will simultaneously appear at 06:00 UTC on Friday 13th February 2026.

In which a galaxy-spanning supercivilisation becomes, so-to-speak, snarked ... "Chaos, Co-ordinated" by John MacDougal is a 1946 short story and an absolute gem. We would not tease people by posting a review of this story if it were completely impossible to get hold of. "Chaos co-ordinated" can be obtained, but it isn't easy. This was only the second book in ten years your reviewers failed to find on Amazon: we got it from the Abebooks.com website. The story was originally published in the October 1946 issue of "Astounding" science fiction, edited by John W Campbell Junior and this, although it is not easy to find, can be obtained. At the time of posting there is a copy of that magazine available at  THE CHRONICLER by Van Vogt, A. E. John W. Campbell, John D. MacDonald, George O. Smith, Hal Clement, Theodore Sturgeon, Clifford Simak: (1946) First Edition. | THE FINE BOOKS COMPANY / A.B.A.A / 1979 Incidentally, we found this edition of "Astounding...

"A Knight of the Dragon Academy 3" by Michael Dalton and Eliza Hawk was published today. It is, as the title suggests, the third part in a series and is available for the Amazon kindle  here . Author Michael Dalton described this series as "Pern by means of the Medicis" This series of novels has elements of what C.S. Lewis used to call a "Bildungsroman" (a coming of age story) in which the central characters aspire to become dragon-riding knights, which they achieve by lifting a curse from the dragon characters and thereby restoring their intelligence and moral conscience. It does indeed have distinct echoes of Anne McCaffrey's "Pern" series except set in a society more like Renaissance-era Venice and Italy in an age of religion and a world of fantasy rather than being set in the future on an alien planet many light years from earth.  A review will be posted within ten days, as soon as we have finished reading the book.  (We intend to get rev...

Stan Ford, a royal navy veteran who took part in the D-Day landings and survived the sinking of his ship not long after has died at the age of 100. Stan, who was born in Bristol and later lived in Bath, celebrated his 100th birthday in May 2025, at a party attended by family, friends, and local officials. Above: Stan Ford (centre) at his 100th birthday celebration Ford served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and, at the age of 19, was serving was aboard HMS Fratton when it was torpedoed off the coast of Normandy in August 1944.  HMS Fratton was an escort ship assigned to accompany ships taking men and supplies across the Channel on D-Day and afterwards. The impact of the explosion from the torpedo which sank her was so severe that the gun platform Stan Ford was operating was blown off the ship and into the sea, with him still on it. He suffered a fractured spine and injuries to both legs when the ship was sunk in 1944, leaving him with lifelong injuries. He was pulled ...

Posted by Steve Byrne @stevebyrnelive on X: " Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy saved my father's life. I was visiting him the hospital. He's been unresponsive for days. I turned on the tv in his room & watched this new show. Within minutes, my father woke up. Then he got up and changed the channel. " ( Steve Byrne on X: "Star Trek: Star Fleet Academy saved my father's life. I was visiting him the hospital. He's been unresponsive for days. I turned on the tv in his room & watched this new show. Within minutes, my father woke up. Then he got up and changed the channel." / X )

  And Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris - known to popular history as "Bomber Harris" - was as good as his word.

In 2024, while the world known as Sol III had quite a lot of elections going on, we indulged in a speculation of what Grand Admiral Thrawn's election pitch to run the galaxy far, far away might have been like had the power to do so been determined by voting rather than war. You can still find it at: Vote Thrawn - the Chiss Alternative ! The "Star Wars Archive" group put together, with a bit of AI help, a similar speculation about what the Grand Admiral might say to the citizens of Coruscant when that world came under his control ...

Music performed by Europe:  Video from the First battle of Geonosis (which takes place during the film "Attack of the Clones")

"An algorithm’s watching me, I am not certain why, It sends advertisements for things I do not want to buy, It makes me feel uneasy, that upon me it has preyed, And if I could locate it, I would whack it with a spade." Pam Ayres MBE (Hat tip to Sally Frise who reposted it on X, formerly twitter, today.)

Allan Massie, the author, columnist and The Scotsman’s chief literary critic who wrote for the paper for 50 years, has died aged 87. Mr Massie had been suffering from cancer and passed away on Tuesday at the home of his daughter, Claudia, surrounded by his family. It is estimated Mr Massie reviewed some 3,500 books for The Scotsman since starting at the paper in 1975, and he also contributed to the sports pages, where his columns on rugby and cricket ran for over three decades. Mr Massie wrote more than 25 novels, starting with Change and Decay in All Around I See in 1978. The Last Peacock (1980) won a literary award and was followed by The Death of Men, a thriller based on the 1978 kidnapping and murder by terrorists of Italian statesman Aldo Moro. His mid-European trilogy of A Question of Loyalties (1989), The Sins of the Father (1991) and Shadows of Empire (1997), was considered by the author to be among his best work. Widely published in France as well as the UK, he was honoured wi...

" Beyond the Rift " which is the fourth and final part of the "Transdimensional Hunter" SF quartet by John Ringo and  Lydia Sherrer was published today. It's available for the Amazon kindle  here . This series of novels is what C.S. Lewis used to call a "Bildungsroman" (a coming of age story) in which the central character is a teenage gamer, playing a VR game about a supposed Transdimensional threat to humanity. Unknown at the start of the story to her, or most of the people playing the game, it is not actually a game at all - the threat is real and they are really defending the earth. Distinct shades of "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card (which is at one point referenced in this book). A review will be posted within ten days, as soon as we have finished reading the book.  (We intend to get reviews of new books up quickly when they come out, but not at the price of reviewing a book before we have finished reading it properly!)