The Woman’s Hour web page

…is not the question. Instead, it seems to be when? The BBC Radio 4 programme Woman’s Hour discussed the subject of “late motherhood” the other day, and all kinds of passionate opinions were expressed during the phone-in about the dilemma faced by modern women in choosing between children and a career.

Isn’t it odd how the tables have turned? Twenty years ago, when my generation was just about to graduate from university, preganancy was almost the worst thing that could happen to a girl. Now, the inability to have children is the great tragedy of my age group. From one extreme to the other in 20 years. Hindsight is often considered a wonderful thing, but what will we tell our daughters to do when it’s their turn to choose?

From Radio Canada International’s Cyberjournal for January 9, 2004:

IT’S COLD IN CANADA

Several regions of Canada are enduring extreme cold conditions. The cold has led to the deaths of at least five people in Western Canada. Areas of the central provinces of Ontario and Quebec also are enduring severe cold. The temperature reached -39 Celsius in the northwestern town of Royun-Noranda, Qu

Last night Channel 4 broadcast a programme titled Britain’s Real Monarch, in which Tony Robinson (of Time Team and Blackadder fame) presented the theory that the current Queen is not the rightful heir to the throne.
It seems that substantial evidence suggests that Edward IV was illegitimate, and that the crown should have passed instead to his half-brother George, the Duke of Clarence; and subsequently to a completely different family line than those of the Tudors, the House of Hanover and the House of Windsor.
Robinson concluded that the history of Britain might have been very different if the “real” King George I had succeeded to the throne in 1461. Without Henry VIII England might have remained a Catholic country, and the United Kingdom might never have been formed if an independent Scotland had retained its own monarch.

Selina, Countess of Huntingdon.

The programme’s web site contains a full family tree that illustrates both the present and alternative royal lines. If you follow the alternative line closely you will see that King Theophilus II should have succeeded to the throne in 1705. In 1728 he married Selina Shirley, aka the Countess of Huntingdon, who converted to Methodism in 1738 and went on to establish many non-conformist chapels and eventually founded her own “connexion” within the Methodist church.
So if Theophilus had been King, Selina would have been Queen, and Methodism might have become the dominant denomination in England. Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, once called the “Queen of Methodists”, would have been Queen of England too.
For more information on Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, see Making History: The Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion or The Elect Lady by Gilbert W. Kirby.

The International Herald Tribune deserves to be more widely read, particularly the online edition. Not only does it have the best design of any newspaper on the web, with really useful features such as “Clippings”, but it also has some extremely knowledgeable writers on its staff, including Patricia Wells and Souren Melikian.

Yesterday the IHT published an article that warms the cockles of my heart. In London’s restaurant revolution Roger Collis wrote:

Today, eating out in London is better than eating out in Paris; food here has become some of the best in the world in a relatively short period of time – an incredible revolution, similar to that in New York, because of the nature of the way people live today and the diversity of ethnic food.

Good food in Britain is really not news these days. London in particular has had first rate restaurants for at least a decade. Instead the heart warming element of Collis’ article comes later when he quotes Tim and Nina Zagat, publishers of several well-known restaurant guides:

“…one thing that can destroy a good experience or make a modest experience into a good one is hospitality, not service, when you are made welcome by someone who looks like they’re glad to see you. Hospitality can make or break an experience. It’s the weak link everywhere we have surveyed – at any level. People are either nice or they’re not nice.”

Nina Zagat adds: “There are no schools for hospitality and training here or in the States as there are for chefs. Sixty-seven percent of complaints in our London survey related to service; while the combined complaints about the food, parking, smoking, noise, crowding, everything else, was only about 30 percent. That tells you the problem. The industry should hire nice people, hire for hospitality and understanding.

“Danny Meyer, who owns the Union Square Caf

From Thoughts in Westminster Abbey by Joseph Addison (1672-1719):

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow: when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.