Lysenko’s Farm
‘Whoever wants to understand Russia should come here and look down at Moscow’. The place Anton Chekhov is describing is the Sparrow Hills (Воробьёвы го́ры); forested parkland rolling down to the […]
Macassar Oil
In his later years, the vigour King Shaka of the Zulu was renowned for was deserting him. Since his mother’s death his commands had become even more contentious and erratic. No […]
Derleth’s Elemental Classification
Everything in the world can be divided into four types of thing. Well, maybe, five. It depends whose system of philosophy you tend towards and whether you think that aether […]
The Kerguelen Archipelago
Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec had the unfortunate experience of not discovering Australia. He’d been commissioned by King Louis XV to search the Southern ocean for the rumoured Terra Australis, a fabled […]
Operation Polo
The Princely State of Hyderabad. A land of peasant farmers and diamond mines as well as refined living in the capital, Hyderabad. Notionally independent since the fall of the Mughal […]
The Camisards
Some five months after his passing, Dr. Thomas Emes was to rise from the grave in Bunhill Cemetery in which he was interred. The date was fixed for the 25th […]
Hyperdiffusionism
Once upon a time, a wooden raft washed up on the shore of Raroia Atoll carrying five Norwegians and a Swede. They’d left Callao in Peru just over three months […]
William Crockford
Welcome to hell. Yes, the walls are lined with Rococo scenes after the style of Watteau, and the plasterwork adorning the ceiling is remarkably intricate and tasteful. The oak panelling […]
The Brannock Device
A lump of die-cast metal. To one side a beak-shaped slide points at a calibrated scale. Opposite, another orthogonal slide designed to press, if not squish, the contents of the […]
Ravelled Esoterica 