David Shaw-Parker

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern...

There is something about the number 3.The Ancient Greeks believed 3 was the perfect number, and in China 3 has always been a lucky number, and they know a thing or two.Most religions also have 3 this and 3 that and, of course, in these more modern...

Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family.Life for the young Kafka and his passion for literature was often made an ordeal by his over-bearing and domineering entrepreneur of a...

Leslie Harrison Lambert was born on 11th November 1883 in Nottingham.After attending Rugby School he trained to be a surveyor. One of his passions was magic and such was his prowess that he joined The Magic Circle, and performed at society events.By...

Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, then in Bohemia, the eldest of 6, into a middle-class Jewish family.Life for the young Kafka and his passion for literature was often made an ordeal by his over-bearing and domineering entrepreneur of a...

William Edward Norris was born on the 18th November 1847, the son of Sir William Norris, the Chief Justice of Ceylon.Norris was educated at Eton before studying law and being called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1874.However, he never practiced...

‘A dime a dozen’ as known in America, is perhaps equal to the English ‘cheap as chips’ but whatever the lingua franca of your choice in this series we hereby submit ‘A Rhyme a Dozen’ as 12 poems on many given subjects that are a well-rounded...

‘A dime a dozen’ as known in America, is perhaps equal to the English ‘cheap as chips’ but whatever the lingua franca of your choice in this series we hereby submit ‘A Rhyme a Dozen’ as 12 poems on many given subjects that are a well-rounded...

‘A dime a dozen’ as known in America, is perhaps equal to the English ‘cheap as chips’ but whatever the lingua franca of your choice in this series we hereby submit ‘A Rhyme a Dozen’ as 12 poems on many given subjects that are a well-rounded...

Geoffrey Bache Smith was born in Staffordshire on 18th October 1894.He attended King Edward’s School, Birmingham at the same time as J.R.R. Tolkien, where they founded the literary “Tea Cup and Barovian Society”.Geoffrey was commissioned as a...

Lucy Gertrude Moberly was born in 1861 at Winchester in Hampshire, England, one of eight children.Details of her life are scant, but it is known that she trained as a nurse before returning to the family home, a vicarage where her father worked, to...

Alexander Kuprin was born in Narovchat, Penza in Russia on 7th September 1870.At 3 his Father died and he and mother moved to Moscow. By 10 he was enrolled at the Second Moscow Military High School and there his interest in literature began. The...

Alfred Lichtenstein was born on the 23rd August 1889, in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, the son of a Jewish manufacturer. He grew up in Berlin before studying law at Erlangen in Bavaria.A writer in the Expressionist style his poems and stories are short but...

Vernon Lee was born Violet Paget on 4th October 1856 in Boulogne, France to intellectual expatriate British parents.In common with several other very talented literary women of the day she felt it necessary to publish under a masculine pseudonym in...

François-Anatole Thibault was born on the 16th April 1844 in Paris, France, the son of a bookseller and bibliophile.He studied at the Collège Stanislas, a private Catholic school, and after graduating joined his father in the bookstore, which...

Mary Frances Butts was born on 13th December 1890 in Poole, Dorset.Her early years were spent at Salterns, an 18th-century house overlooking Poole Harbour. Sadly in 1905 her father died, and she was sent for boarding at St Leonard's school for girls...

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins was born on 9th February 1863 in Clapton, London.He was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead, Marlborough College and Balliol College, Oxford. Hope trained as a lawyer and barrister and was called to the Bar by the Middle...

Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number.Such is its popularity that...

Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number.Such is its popularity that...

Mayer André Marcel Schwob was born in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine, France on 23rd August 1867 into a cultivated Jewish family.As a child he devoured the works of Poe and Stevenson in French and then again in English. His attachment to the bizarre and...

Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number.Such is its popularity that...

Barry Eric Odell Pain was born at 3 Sydney Street in Cambridge on 28th September 1864. He was one of 4 children.He was educated at Sedbergh School and then Corpus Christi College, Cambridge where he read classics and contributed to and edited...