Chris Stokes
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Chris Stokes
@nisaccom.bsky.social
Loving this 1984 recording of Monteverdi's Vespro della beata Vergine (1610) rescued from a charity shop. Performance by the Taverner Consort, Taverner Choir and Taverner Players, conducted by Andrew Parrott.
November 27, 2025 at 5:37 PM
The earliest instances of use in English according to the OED were in 1799 and 1800. Can't find a copy of the 1799 one in the right edition. Here's the 1800 one, from The Annual Register...For the Year 1798. Not that it tells us much about how we got the word from French.
November 21, 2025 at 2:29 PM
Besides, as he quotes the last stanza, you'd have thought Pinsky or the fact-checker would have read the next bit, the first note at the end of the poem:
November 17, 2025 at 1:33 PM
This might be my favourite brick.
November 17, 2025 at 6:48 AM
BCU is on the case.
November 15, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Same road in May last year
November 7, 2025 at 8:57 PM
They don't seem to have been too nervous about the connexion between military and police use early on. This is from the Richmond Palladium, 10 July 1917:
November 6, 2025 at 7:17 PM
Look on his Sphere of Influence, ye Mighty, and despair!
cdn.prod.website-files.com/5fdb2fcbe8cb...
November 4, 2025 at 5:46 PM
Are there dictionaries or even wild how-to-write-proper guides that disagree with:
November 2, 2025 at 8:28 AM
October 28, 2025 at 11:56 AM
Here he is in uniform in 1943.
October 22, 2025 at 4:48 PM
Picked these up from a boxful at the front gate of a house with a sign inviting passers-by to help themselves. Of course, you never can find your runcible spoon when you need it, can you?
October 19, 2025 at 4:30 PM
In case you were wondering
October 5, 2025 at 8:46 AM
Women in Love:
October 1, 2025 at 5:41 PM
One Kate Leonard was the subject of the earliest, on 7 March 1924, after making her 77th appearance in court. Drank meths she did.
September 28, 2025 at 7:30 PM
But you're helping the UK to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. This is from the gov's press release announcing its 'historic trade deal with India' in July:
September 18, 2025 at 9:11 PM
Who was this Oxonian poet and anthologist who mistook Roy Fuller's filthy aunt for a painting?
September 2, 2025 at 11:00 AM
'Wellcome recommends the Government move beyond the language of science superpower or innovation powerhouse'.

Well science-superpower talk is vanishing from parliament. Here's the last five years and a bit (from 4 July 2020, four years before the general election):
September 2, 2025 at 7:37 AM
Forget AI. The real money's in nails.
books.google.com/ngrams/graph...
August 26, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Mark your calendars. Welcome Week at the University of No Regrets kicks off on 22 of September.
pxl-lincolnacuk.terminalfour.net/filters:form...
August 26, 2025 at 11:16 AM
One European delicacy I haven't yet found in Lidl—pickled canned cormorant thigh.
August 22, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Wendy Cope and the Worldwide Fund for Nature—house on fire.

Have had a Cope-signed copy of Two Cures for Love for years (but inscribed to Barry—thanks Baz). And only now do I read this, the last poem in the selection!
July 27, 2025 at 9:23 PM
1 January 2016:
July 23, 2025 at 2:01 PM
With
July 21, 2025 at 8:39 PM
I've not read it so much as read chunks at intervals and I won't say it's put me at much risk of getting that barefoot feeling, but plenty of reviewers have praised Alison Bashford's book on TH & Julian Huxley. Beware; it's thematic & not chronological.
July 20, 2025 at 7:48 PM