If you prefer to work on the interactive version, click on this LINK.

Across

    7  Roman statesman and philosopher who was an advisor to Nero (6)

    8  Guided missile developed by the French government for use against ships (6)

    9  Supreme god of ancient Greek mythology (4)

  10  Queen of Castile whose marriage to Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469 marked the beginning of the modern state of Spain (8)

  11  Italian sculptor and architect of the baroque period in Italy; designed many churches and chapels and tombs and fountains (1598-1680) (7)

  13  White South Africans who speak Afrikaans as their first language (5)

  15  Book in the Old Testament that tells the story of a man swallowed by a whale (5)

  16  Member of the French-speaking people living in Belgium (7)

  18  Dialect of Chinese spoken in Beijing and adopted as the official language for all of China (8)

  19  Hebrew patriarch who saved himself and his family and the animals by building an ark (4)

  21  Capital and largest city and major port of the Irish Republic (6)

  22  One of the principal names by which God is designated in the Hebrew Scriptures (6)

Down

    1  Goddess of youth and spring; wife of Hercules; daughter of Zeus and Hera; cupbearer to the Olympian gods (4)

    2  South African statesman who was released from prison to become the nation’s president after the first multi-racial election in 1994 (born in 1918) (6,7)

    3  English writer of stories for children (1882-1956) (1,1,5)

    4  French impressionist painter (1834-1917) (5)

    5  A fortress in London on the Thames; used as a palace and a state prison and now as a museum containing the crown jewels (5,2,6)

    6  Resort Island off the coast of Florida (3,5)

  12  Roman name for York (8)

  14  Volcanic peak in the south-west of Washington State (7)

  17  River in central England that flows generally northeastward to join with the Ouse River and form the Humber (5)

  20  Largest continent with 60% of the earth’s population; it is joined to Europe on the west to form Eurasia; it is the site of some of the world’s earliest civilizations (4)

Here is last week’s solution – of course, the only vowel in the across clues was A:

Andrew Miller’s Pure won the 2011 Costa Book of the Year and appeared in paperback in 2012. It is set in Paris in 1785 and, although it is a work of fiction, really evokes pre-revolutionary France.

A young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte, has only one bridge to his name, but he is employed to excavate and remove all the bodies from Les Innocents cemetery in the heart of Paris, and to demolish the church. The cemetery had been over-filled and pollutes the surrounding area, even tainting the breath of those who live around its precincts and rendering the food unpalatable.

Baratte’s task finds him friends, including the neighborhood whore, Héloise, and the charismatic organist, Armand, who plays to an empty church. However, a range of emotions, including murderous ones, is aroused by the task he has undertaken.

This is fiction, not history, but it is based on real events which caught Miller’s attention and prompted him to recreate the story. Pure reads like history when characters such as Dr Guillotin enter the narrative. We are aware, all through the story, of the tensions and events that were to come.

If you prefer to work on the interactive version, click on this LINK. The clues are of the general knowledge type but the solutions have a feature in common.

Across

    1  Small cake leavened with yeast (4)

    3  Colloidal extract of algae; used especially in culture media and as a gelling agent in foods (4-4)

    9  In a tedious manner (7)

  10  Cocaine (5)

  11  Tiresome, persistent or meaningless chatter (4,4,4)

  14  With the addition of (3)

  16  Snares (5)

  17  Farm in southern France (3)

  18  Pink paste made from fish roe and used as a dip for food (12)

  21  Unit of measurement for the proportion of gold in an alloy (5)

  22  Festival commemorating the announcement of the Incarnation by the angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary; a quarter day in England, Wales, and Ireland (4,3)

  23  Medium-sized larch of Canada and northern United States including Alaska having a broad conic crown and rust-brown scaly bark (8)

  24  Snakes of southern Europe; similar to but smaller than the adder (4)

Down

    1  United States songwriter noted for his protest songs (3,5)

    2  Took out the fillets (5)

    4  Bright and pleasant (3)

    5  Rugged offshore places in Australia (5,7)

    6  Old lady (7)

    7  Dissolute man of fashion (4)

    8  Practice fencing (4,2,6)

  12  Theatrical entertainment (5)

  13  All who (2,4,2)

  15  Drawing showing the relation between the parts (7)

  19  Yellow-fever mosquitos (5)

  20  Singing jazz; the singer substitutes nonsense syllables for the words of the song and tries to sound like a musical instrument (4)

  22  Resinlike substance (3)

Here is last week’s solution:

Dr John Rae was an Orkney man who worked for the Hudson Bay Company and devoted his life to exploring, investigating and documenting the northern part of the American continent. During his lifetime, he was not fully recognised for all that he did to awaken the world to the culture, the wildlife and the history of the Arctic regions.

Rae was one of the many who searched for the ill-fated expedition of Sir John Franklin and his ships, the Erebus and the Terror that disappeared during their search for the north-west passage. He knew the Inuit well enough to glean and trust information from them. Later expeditions bore out Rae’s information.

For his many expeditions, Rae adopted Inuit survival techniques and only one man was ever lost during his journeys into the Artic wastes. This beautifully illustrated volume, created for the National Museums of Scotland by Ian Bunyan, Jenni Calder, Dale Idiens and Bryce Wilson, does justice to an explorer who was not recognised during his lifetime.

This crossword honours a number of people who are of a kind. If you prefer to work on the interactive version click on this LINK.

Across

    1  See 8

    5  See 22

8/14/1   US Secretary of State from January 2009 (born 1947) (7,6,7)

    9  The revolving bar of a distributor (5)

  10  Become ground down or deteriorate (5)

  11  (Military) close fighting during the culmination of a military attack (7)

  12  English novelist noted for her insightful portrayals of middle-class families (1775-1817) (6)

  14  See 8

  17  A four-wheeled wagon that runs on tracks in a mine (7)

  19  Valley of Peneus in Thessaly praised by ancient poets for its great beauty (5)

22/5 French chemist (born in Poland) who won two Nobel prizes; one (with her husband and Henri Becquerel) for research on radioactivity and another for her discovery of radium and polonium (1867-1934) (5,5)

  23  Jewel cut in a pointed oval shape (7)

  24  Misfortune resulting in lost effort or money (5)

  25  Adornment consisting of an ornamental cloth pad worn on the shoulder (7)

Down

    1  Fatty pinkish flesh of small salmon caught in the Pacific and Great Lakes (5)

    2  An Eskimo hut; usually built of blocks (of sod or snow) in the shape of a dome (5)

    3  A swing used by circus acrobats (7)

    4  Deny or contradict (6)

5/21 United States tennis player who won women’s singles titles in the United States and at Wimbledon (born in 1954) (0,5,5)

    6  (Photography) alter so as to produce a more desirable appearance (7)

    7  A mistake in printed matter resulting from mechanical failures of some kind (7)

  12  (Greek mythology) the virgin goddess of the hunt and the Moon; daughter of Leto and twin sister of Apollo; identified with Roman Diana (7)

  13  Any of several small dull-coloured singing birds feeding on seeds or insects (7)

  15  Fourth wife of Marc Antony (7)

  16  English novelist; one of three sisters (1818-1848) (6)

  18  A cry or shout of approval (5)

  20  Any of several chemical elements that are usually shiny solids that conduct heat or electricity and can be formed into sheets etc. (5)

  21  See 5

Here is last week’s solution:

Very little is known about Henry VIII’s third wife and we all know that she died of what was probably puerperal fever after the birth of Prince Edward, so I wondered how David Loades would fill a complete volume writing on Henry’s favourite wife, Jane Seymour, the one he is buried alongside.

Indeed, the first chapter which attempts to trace Jane’s ancestry ‘with the aid of some imaginative speculation’ confirmed my suspicions that this could not have been an easy volume to fill. Nor did Jane provide us with scandalous gossip during the years she served as a lady in waiting for both Queen Mary and Queen Anne Boleyn. David Loades stresses that she was no great beauty but a virgin of ‘good breeding stock’.

Nevertheless, for those of us who enjoy the texts on Tudor history that have appeared in great number over the last couple of decades, this is an attractive addition which touches on the queens who came before and after Jane, with pleasing illustrations, and goes at some length into the early years of Prince Edward, the short-lived Edward VI.

The book’s back cover gives us Holbein’s portrait of the young Edward, who, Loades tells us, was ‘very much his father’s boy’.

If you prefer to work on the interactive version, click on this LINK.

Across

    1  Trooped round submarine weapon (7)

    4  Well-considered director involved in complicated duties (7)

    9  British have need of spice – pungent aromatic one (5,6)

  11  Lake modified in Eire (4)

  12  Scottish version of 12 (4)

  13  One old instrument on a modern one – a bass stringed one (11)

  14  Anything locally returned for a pair (3)

  15  In France end of an aeroplane tail section (3)

  16  A French commodity brought in by a worker, of little significance (11)

  21  Company in Italy has ordinary Italian method of greeting (4)

  22  One’s different ages (4)

  23  Peculiarly compose path in heap of manure (7,4)

  24  Unwonted red tape slowly diminishing in size (7)

  25  Drunkenly steal by like a brute (7)

Down

    1  Disastrous latest count for someone spotting able people (6,5)

    2  Roman caps in heap on island (5)

    3  Of the French leading aircraftman turning up – suitable for a noble! (5)

    5  Tent is a peculiar masterpiece, not including misguided racism (5)

    6  Remain and perform in a good manner without a hint of opposition (5)

    7  Sly hedonist running wild in a way that lacks integrity (11)

    8  Hospitality to all in old top floor flat with no limit finally (4,5)

    9  US Taxi turns up round four on Open University temporary living quarters (7)

  10  In a turmoil opt for ordinary surface of building (7)

  17  Nobody’s energy after lunchtime (2,3)

  18  Strangely ample tree (5)

  19  Tittering laugh of man surrounded by support (5)

  20  Nasty snare comes closer (5)

Here is last week’s solution:

If you would like to refresh those perhaps dimly remembered facts from school or even university chemistry, or are just curious about the substances and materials that are all around us, this will interest you. There is information here about most of the elements (both natural, such as carbon, and ‘artificial’, such as lawrencium). Where were they discovered, how are they produced, what (if anything) are they used for? Aluminium, for example, was hard initially to extract and was extremely costly: Napoleon III’s favoured guests were offered aluminium cutlery, not silver. Now it’s everywhere. Will it be followed by today’s equivalent costly (but useful) titanium? Read all about it here. Napoleon III being mentioned, what of the allegations that the metal arsenic, whose poisonous compounds were commonly used in dyes and were at least partly responsible for the death of Napoleon I on St Helena? That is discussed too in this wide-ranging book.

The abundance of rare earth metals found in one small Swedish quarry at Ytterby (yttrium, gadolinium, samarium, ..) which are described here might prompt you to visit it (if only by courtesy of Google Earth).

Hopefully, your interest will go further. The author doesn’t tell you, for example, about the haste to re-open the MountainPass mines in the US to extract the rare metal neodymium, supply of which is almost monopolized by China. Thousands of tons are needed annually for wind-farm turbine magnets!

If you prefer to work on the interactive version, click on this LINK.

Across

    1  A low heavy horse cart without sides; used for haulage (4)

    3  Breed of Lake District sheep (8)

    9  A great musician; when his wife Eurydice died he went to Hades to get her back but failed (7)

  10  King of Judea who (according to the New Testament) tried to kill Jesus by ordering the death of all children under age two in Bethlehem (73-4 BC) (5)

  11  European bunting the male being bright yellow (12)

  14  Swiss canton (3)

  16  French neoclassical painter who actively supported the French Revolution (1748-1825) (5)

  17  United States general who supervised the invasion of Normandy and the defeat of Nazi Germany; 34th President of the United States (1890-1969) (3)

  18  Beautiful place where Adam and Eve were placed at the Creation (6,2,4)

  21  Any of a class of organic compounds that contain the divalent radical -CONHCO (5)

  22  Women participants in the orgiastic rites of Dionysus (7)

  23  Metric unit of length equal to one ten billionth of a meter (or 0.0001 micron); used to specify wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (8)

  24  Adam’s son (4)

Down

    1  God of wine and fertility and drama; the Greek name of Bacchus (8)

    2  A sharp blow with the épée, also used as a feint (5)

    4  Winged goddess of the dawn in ancient mythology; daughter of Hyperion; identified with Roman Aurora (3)

    5  Device for removing the moisture content from air (12)

    6  Of or relating to or characteristic of a middle eastern country (7)

    7  Scottish sea captain who was hired to protect British shipping in the Indian Ocean and then was accused of piracy and hanged (1645-1701) (4)

    8  Reappearance of Jesus as judge for the Last Judgment (6,6)

  12  Shelter serving as a place of safety or sanctuary (5)

  13  Englishman and Victorian poet (1809-1892) (8)

  15  Obtaining pictures of the interior of the body (7)

  19  Virgin goddess of the hunt and the Moon; counterpart of Greek Artemis (5)

  20  Finely meshed cotton fabric used for cross-stitch embroidery (4)

  22  Chinese communist leader (1893-1976) (3)

Here is last week’s solution:

It isn’t far from where I am writing to Pendle Hill and I grew up with the knowledge that there had been witches at Pendle at the start of the seventeenth century.

In The Daylight Gate, Jeanette Winterson has used the facts of the trial of the Lancashire witches of 1612 and woven the story that lies behind it.

“Of course we know that witches don’t exist and never did; they were just social outcasts, poor starving widows and misfits, victimised by men and people in power!” That was my attitude when I started reading this seductive story and at first, Jeanette Winterson seemed to be confirming my view.

Then we met the noblewoman Alice Nutter, strangely youthful for what must have been her advanced age. We found her sheltering one escapee from the Gunpowder Plotters (they too were to be found in Lancashire, an area of the UK that remained resolutely Catholic after the plot was unveiled and they had to flee).

Slowly but surely, in an exciting narrative, we realize that indeed witchcraft was rife, though perhaps not in compact with the Devil and not effectively practised by the riff-raff of the novel but as a positive and effective form of magic.