Journalist.
Writer.

Journalist and author who writes about travel for the Daily Mail and about arts and science for everyone else.

Features

Nautilus, March 2023

Inventing cordite

Troitsky Variant, February 2023

Science without borders

Port Magazine, January 2023

Young Casanova

The Spectator, December 2022

The unluckiest Tube stop

Travel

Daily Mail, February 2023

The real Happy Valley

Daily Mail, December 2022

Thwack! Thwack!

Daily Mail, June 2022

Carry on campervanning

Daily Mail, May 2022

Europe’s cheapest beach

Book Reviews

In the late 19th century, the quest began for an i

In the late 19th century, the quest began for an improvement on gunpowder.
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The trouble with gunpowder was that it gave off a puff of smoke, making it easy for the enemy to tell your position. In the 1880s, the British government set up the Explosives Committee to find a smokeless alternative, and appointed James Dewar, the crotchety Scottish chemist at the Royal Institution, as its chief investigator (pic 2). He took a new formula being worked on by the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel (pic 3), gave it a tweak, and invented cordite, which was adopted by the British army and used in WWI. Furious, Nobel sued, claiming he had been robbed—but he lost all three court cases. Dewar was knighted and garlanded with awards, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, he never won a Nobel prize. He died 100 years ago on 27 March. I now work some of the time as a science writer for the London Institute for Mathematical Science, which occupies the same rooms at the Royal Institution in which Dewar lived and died.
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To read the full story about Dewar’s invention of cordite, go to thomaswhodgkinson.com and check out the top Feature, which was published in Nautilus.
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#science #britishscience #royalinstitution #jamesdewar #nautilus #nautilusmagazine #cordite #militaryhistory #explosives #chemistry #victorianhistory #scientists #1923

What links these three images? . . Answer: all thr

What links these three images?
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Answer: all three are from films that make crucial use of U2 songs at pivotal plot moments.
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At the end of Reality Bites, All I Want Is You plays while Troy realises that all he wants is Winona Ryder. In Friends, With or Without You plays while Ross and Rachel realise that, if they can’t live with each other, they definitely can’t live without each other. In Fearless, Jeff Bridges drags Rosie Perez into a car and, to the tunes of Where the Streets Have No Name, drives as fast as he can into a wall. It’s not clear what the relevance of the song is to the onscreen action.
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Niche but valuable information.
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#friends #rossandrachel #realitybites #winonaryder #ethanhawke #jeffbridges #rosieperez #nichebutvaluable #u2

During the First World War, this patriotic poster

During the First World War, this patriotic poster appeared on the London Underground, quoting Pericles, who defines “the secret of happiness” as “freedom”, and “the secret of freedom” a “a brave heart”. Which gives me a shiver every time—and possibly indicates a greater familiarity with classical history in 1915 than you might expect to find today.
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#classics #pericles #londonunderground #freedom #thetube #tubedesign

The graveyard at Heptonstall. . . I was sent to th

The graveyard at Heptonstall.
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I was sent to the Yorkshire town of Hebden Bridge to write about the effect of the TV show Happy Valley on the place. The little village of Heptonstall, which overlooks it, is a must-visit. Sylvia Plath is buried here. So is the fictional Becky, Catherine Cawood’s daughter in Happy Valley. So is the murderous real-life counterfeiter David Hartley, whose stone slab (one of the ones in this picture) is scattered with sheckles in tribute to his nefarious occupation.
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I was shown round by local David Pearce who runs a beautiful B&B in town with his partner Manya (google “Hebble End View” for more details). As we entered the church we were greeted by a blast of Bach from the organist, who was performing to an otherwise empty nave.
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#hebdenbridge #happyvalley #heptonstall #sylviaplath #davidhartley #thegallowspole #yorkshire #visityorkshire #sarahlancashire

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