oh, bugger...

R.I.P., George MacDonald Fraser. Looks like he hung on until his latest book got to print.

I love his adventure fiction (including his screenplays for the Richard Lester films of The Three Musketeers and his marvelous historical novels about the ultimate Victorian bad boy, Sir Harry Flashman), but most of all I love his short stories about life as a junior officer in the Army after WWII (and his short and scattered memoir about his service as an enlisted man *during* the war, in Burma no less).

Good thing I'll be going to the pub tonight--a toast to the memory of a grand curmudgeon and excellent story-teller is definitely warranted.

new year

The New Year's holiday was nice. ( Read more... )

righty-ho--another course done

Comments from my prof on my term paper:

I fully concur with your closing note here… Your paper significantly advanced the class in their overall knowledge base of the region… at first I was concerned that it might be too regionally narrow, focused on Iran alone as it was… yet its implications for the wider politics and cultural milieu of the region became manifest early on in the reading

Well written (of course), solidly researched, and an easy and informative read… just reaching assignment parameters, but its overall quality somewhat atoned for that…
Nice work! 98%

Those barmy enough to be interested in reading ~15 pages on "The Influence Of Britain And Russia On Iran Before And During The World Wars" are welcome to a copy by email. ;-)