“James Bond’s Armourer”

Geoffrey Boothroyd really did write me on Model 12 Winchesters. He also really held that “position”- a critical letter to Ian Fleming on guns, early in the series, led to Fleming’s whimsically writing him into the books as a character. With Fleming, early in his career. Here is the Winchester letter. He later provided an …

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Indian Vultures

I wrote soberly on the Indian Vulture crisis years ago in the Atlantic. They continued to decline; nobody gives a damn about serious whiny articles. Today, my friend Jemima “Mima” Parry Jones, daughter of the grand old falconer Philip Glasier, sent me this YouTube piece of pro- vulture propaganda, and I am envious- it will …

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In need of correction…

From a recent Guardian, as reported in the PLF blog. These children can’t be serious– I have see better reporting by high school students in rural New Mexico…  A review of David Astor: A Life in Print, a biography of the former editor of the Observer, contained a number of errors (20 February, page 7, …

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One more light one…

This amazing illo of a mammoth apparently walking out of a frozen bank is from a 19th c childrens’ travel book. The text is sensible enough but the ilustration almost made me buy the book..

A Little Place Marker

Plenty of material, madly busy, but this image, courtesy of John L Moore, will stand, as truth, as a testimonial to my old rifles, and to  my vanity that my hair is growing back, if not quite here yet. At least I can go out now without a hat…

Driving with Animals

Charley Waterman used to say. of a dog that always occupied the driving seat when the humans were absent, that she knew driving was important, and that somebody had to do it; she just didn’t know how.