Mihangel

No problem with me either. A while back I had a request to download several copies of a story of mine for use by a gay reading club. I appreciated that. Fine again, provided it went no further.

I've tried to contact Josh too, and so have a couple of friends who asked around, with the same result. We concluded that he's either dead or has gone to ground.

FT, why not ask Frederic for help? He says on his author's page that he's bilingual.

But care is needed. Dabeagle's list is American, and in British English some rules are different (I can't speak for Aussie rules). I'd agree with 10 of the 12. But in modern British English the example it gives, afterward he walked toward the coffee shop, is simply wrong. We say afterwards he walked towards the coffee shop. And farther v further (BTW, there's another difference - vs in American, v in British). Very few people these days retain the distinction. Virtually always it's further, for both purposes. And wholly acceptable even in formal writing.

Thanks guys. If this story works, it's a relief, because its background and the course that it takes are both unusual. I reckon I put more of me into it than into any other of mine, and God knows how many revisions it went through.

Ah, Mary Renault! I first read her in 1956 when The Last of the Wine came out. I was still at school, doing classics, and it gave a better picture of life in 5th-century-BC Athens that any academic tome of the day; and I think than any published since. Far more important, it began to open my puzzled young eyes to the enigma of my sexuality, a topic which in those dark days simply could not be discussed with anyone. More important still, it led me on (or back) to The Charioteer (1953) which was necessarily (for those days) understated; but when you read between the lines . . . Thereafter, the day of publication of every new book of hers saw me waiting outside the bookshop at opening time. The Mask of Apollo is still I think my favourite, followed by the first two Alexander books. Once I started writing on this sort of subject myself, she was often in my mind; above all in my long historical Ashes under Uricon, when I was constantly asking myself how she would have tackled it. My debt to her is beyond calculation. And not only was she a superb and mould-breaking writer, but by all accounts a lovely person. I never summoned up the courage to write to her. But for a great essay from one who did, it's well worth reading Daniel Mendelsohn, "The American Boy", in the New Yorker for 7 Jan 2013 (behind a paywall, but if you want to read it, let me know). Bless her.

Dove is understandable - in Britain it's used in some dialects. What always brings me up sharp is Americans saying fit where we say fitted (it fit him like a glove). The OED, which covers American just as much as British English, doesn't even mention it as an alternative past tense. Is it a recent innovation?

Cole comments that my dad was either a pedant or a Cockney. Cockney, no. Pedant maybe, and certainly old-fashioned in clinging to the pronunciation he had learnt when young. This debate isn't about grammar as Nigel claims, but about spelling which in this case (unusually for English) depends on how things are spoken. To me, a style guide which insists on an before every h is simply wrong. I've never heard anyone say an history or an hanging matter. Not only do they sound wrong, they look wrong. Whereas an historian is OK, for the reasons I gave.

Thanks for the kind words, guys! I confess I'm rather fond of the ending too. Someone once asked if it had inspirwed the whole story, but no. Yes, Xenophilia 2 is on its way - next but one to be posted here.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, whose entry on a/an runs to many pages, it's a case of the language changing over time. The current rule - in so far as there is one - depends on where the accent falls. History is accented on the first syllable, and an history now sounds awkward. Historical is accented on the second, and an historical sounds OK. In the past, an was much more widely used, even before (say) eunuch and union, though in speech they begin with y. A turned to an first in the spoken word and later in the written word. It sees an historical as on the way out, though still far from dead. I think that's true. My Dad, who was born in Victorian times and was both a stickler and a historian, described himself as just that - a historian. True, he also spoke of an hotel; he explained that was because hotel comes from French, where the h is silent and (in his day) still was in English too: he said the 'otel.

Cole asks "Do the English really speak with the meanings on that chart in mind? If so, how in the world do they communicate with each other, let alone Americans? Or, is the chart simply intended to be humorous?" Sure, there's humour in it. But I understand the reasoning behind all the examples, and use a lot of them myself. Fabled British understatement? Politely disguised disagreement? If the person you're talking to understands the language too, no problem. Much also depends, don't forget, on tone of voice.

Another deeply embarrassing trap for the unwary, into which I fell before I learned better, is "keep your pecker up." On the two sides of the pond, pecker refers to totally different parts of the anatomy.

Brilliant news indeed. And Scotland is hard on the heels of England and Wales - on 27 June the comparable Marriage and Civil Partnerships Bill (Scotland) was introduced in the Scottish Parliament, with every prospect of success. Northern Ireland? Sadly, as usual, another story.

I very much doubt she was involved in breaking the story. OK, she now stands to make megabucks from the new book, but she's already rolling (sorry, pun not intended). When she says it was liberating to write under a totally different persona, with no public expectations or preconceptions, I believe her, because I'm in a very faintly similar boat. Don't for a moment think I'm another Rowling - I'm emphatically not. But I do lead two utterly different lives, in both of which I write. In one I have a certain academic standing. Nobody in that world knows about my other life here, and nobody here, except my closest friends, knows about my life there. And JKR is right - it is liberating to have two personas. I'm sorry for her sake she's been busted.

There was an old man from Australia Who painted his bum like a dahlia. A penny a smell Was all very well, But tuppence a look was a failure. Old as the hills.

What a wonderful little tale! Sensitive, heart-warming, well-crafted. Do read it if you haven't: http://www.awesomedude.com/coleparker/Short_Stories/grandfathers_conspiracy.htm

My thanks for your kind words. These fripperies were penned for two reasons. First, because there's a limit to how long one can remain serious, they were intended as light relief; and second, they would take the reader into realms where few of our stories go. Chris is quite right - I knew with Sweet William in particular that I was sticking my neck out to the point of ultra-cheekiness. And if the Frivolities have worked on all these counts, then I'm over the moon.

Read this: http://www.guardian....-coming-out-gay Brave man!

La Repubblica in Italy is now saying the reason behind Benedict's resignation is the gay sex scandals of the Vatican itself. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/21/pope-retired-amid-gay-bishop-blackmail-inquiry?INTCMP=SRCH

Weeping buckets when one writes tragedies, yes, thoroughly understood. This is not a tragedy in the Greek sense, in that it does not come about through any flaw in the characters. Rather it is a tragedy in the more common sense of something unavoidable, and an immensely powerful one. Thank you, Alan, for your writing and your suffering.

Shakespeare of course toed the Tudor line. His Richard III is pure propaganda and has coloured the popular view ever since, but is still marvellous. Laurence Olivier's villainous portrayal, though old (1955), is still, in my view, the best ever. See on (it's two and a half hours long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO03SGXeApI

Thanks for the kind words, and especially for those about the location. It seems right to me to use the setting almost as another interacting character, because the place where you live and move is likely to influence your thoughts and deeds. So here: the terrain and the land-use and the climate of a valley like Cwm Croesor - which I've known and loved for 60 years - can't help but shape its inhabitants.

Hmmm. The scholarship's a bit dodgy. But the radish up the arse as a punishment for adultery is OK - aporaphanidosis they called it. See my story The King's Codpiece, soon to appear on AD. Even so, it wasn't little round red radishes as illustrated, but the big wild sort like great white carrots, highly acidic - think horseradish sauce. Definitely a pain in the arse.

No, I don't think that holds water. In schools where sex was rife, everybody knew it was rife. If it had been at mine, everybody would have known. My own circle knew of very few cases; and others who were there then, to whom I have talked in later years, agree. And if it had been rife, many more "offenders" would have been caught and expelled. As it was, only five were expelled over five years in a school of 600. That's not many. Even if five times that number had escaped being caught, it's still not many. Schools where it was rife might see expulsions in double figures per year, sometimes well into double figures. And a culture of sex seems to go hand in hand with a culture of bullying; but in our case there was virtually no bullying either. As I said, there was a wide spectrum. It was remarked at the time that if the sodomy laws were enforced, Eton and Harrow would be half empty. And that, having spoken to Etonians - who did know all about it - I can well believe.

But remember that there was a whole spectrum of schools, and no doubt there still is. In contrast to Bruin, my experience of British boarding schools is sixty years out of date, and at mine there was hardly any same-sex activity going on, and never once did I hear a hint of homophobia. But if practical sex was more or less taboo, talking about it was not. Not salacious talk, but the talk of adolescents trying to be sophisticated and grown-up. Some of it was a pose, almost a fashion. People might say, “God, I’d like to bed that new boy with blond hair!” But they did not. It was mere talk, not only of sex, but of love too, idealised, almost a reflection of medieval courtly love. It seems to me that the more oppressive the regime imposed from above, the more bullying and hole-in-the-corner sex flourished; and the more liberal, the less. That certainly fits my own school in the 1950s, where the atmosphere was open and authority ruled with a light hand.