Sleuthing in the Stacks

  If there's one writer ineluctably connected to Christmas, then it is surely Charles Dickens. His perennial favourite A Christmas Carol is, for many, THE Christmas story par excellence. Adapted many times, with or without added musical numbers and muppets, its redemptive narrative and social criticism are familiar around the world. But Dickens' connection to Christmas goes deeper than that. In the Victorian era his magazine All the Year Round, which he edited or 'conducted' was hugely popular. This was in no small part due to the fact that his own novels, and those of friends such as Wilkie Collins and Elizabeth Gaskell, were serialised in its pages. The first issue in 1859, for example included the opening installment of A Tale of Two Cities and later in the year The Woman in White would begin its serialisation in its pages. But one tradition which became familiar was the Christmas double issue which featured extended stories by various hands. Delving once more down i...

A while back I was wandering around a churchyard in the tiny village of Salcombe Regis , one of those places which can be found , after some effort, at the end of a narrow, rugged lane to nowhere. A horizontal tomb caught my attention due to the intriguing phrases inset into the stone. It’s not often you find evocative words such as ‘solar observatory’ and ‘stellar physics’ on a grave. A biblical passage proclaims ‘the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth his handywork’. A closer examination revealed the grave to be that of Lord and Lady Lockyer. Norman Lockyer (for it is he) gave his name to the astronomical observatory up on the hill above Sidmouth. But how did they both end up in Salcom be Regis. I determined to do some more sleuthing in the stacks to find out.                                          ...