Tuesday, 24 November 2020

Hummingbirds are often thought of as having exceptionally high metabolic rates, but a bumblebee’s is roughly 75 per cent higher

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This in turn enabled them to calculate how much energy bees burn in flight: an estimate of about 1.2 kJh-1. That figure may not mean a lot, ...
Monday, 23 November 2020

Rain was London’s benison, the absolution for its grit and dust

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Williams liked rain. Sunny afternoons on a deckchair in Regent’s Park could be pleasant when he felt like nattering with admire...
Sunday, 22 November 2020

That’s where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap

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All problems have to be solved eventually by oneself and that’s where all your lovely John Donne stuff turns out to be a load of crap becaus...
Saturday, 21 November 2020

Yess, I can do it, dear, cos I know I go home and say my prayers! I’m pure

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Bill Cotton, now BBC head of variety, warned the monologues must be free from double entendres, but Williams took no notice. The night befor...
Friday, 20 November 2020

I couldn’t stand the plumbing and the garlic

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‘The south of Spain,’ Williams remembered later, ‘I thought it sounded rather grand. Only I’d never been anywhere except in the army and, as...
Thursday, 19 November 2020

He could have straddled the world; instead, he lived all his adult life in a series of apartments along the Euston and Marylebone Road

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That notion of innate genius, mysterious and unearned, is at the heart of my fascination with Williams. He was brilliant, an apparently limi...
Wednesday, 18 November 2020

A man starved all his life will never rebel.

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A man starved all his life will never rebel. Up north there was no rebellion. No one raised his voice or his hand there. But just let the su...