Helen Andrews

In John Ellis’s twenty-three years as a hangman for the British government, he executed 203 people including the famous Dr. Crippen, the WWI traitor Roger Casement , the housewife Susan Newell (the last woman ever hanged in Scotland), and James Howarth Hargreaves, with whom Ellis “had . . . . Continue Reading »

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I know Eve Tushnet likes to think of Edward G. Robinson’s character in Five Star Final as the cinematic avatar of self-loathing tabloid journalism, and I can see her point. It’s a good script, and it’s Edward G. Robinson. But if we follow the scent of our story back to Late Night . . . . Continue Reading »

The Washington Post  is going to have to sit in the back of the class for a while, because they let this howler slip through to the final version of “ Christians Join Fight Against Cockfighting ”: Smith’s organization [the Palmetto Family Council] has produced a video that . . . . Continue Reading »

It may sound like a funny premise for a film, but a Turkish director wants to make a movie about Ottoman aid to Ireland during the Great Famine. It’s basically your run-of-the-mill unlikely friendship movie — Fried Green Potatoes , if you will. Also, charming old Ireland has been given . . . . Continue Reading »

A man in Zimbabwe was arrested yesterday when, during a routine roadblock and police search, he was found to be carrying a sack of four Gaboon vipers on a bus. Mathew Aidini, 23, was bringing the snakes to Harare in order to sell them to what The Zimbabwean refers to as “an undisclosed . . . . Continue Reading »

He did not wear his scarlet coat,      For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands      When they found him with the dead . . . But the coat worn by Charles Thomas Wooldridge, the unnamed hangee of “The Ballad of Reading . . . . Continue Reading »

This 200-page history of the Oxford Union preserves undergraduate wit with enormously greater permanence than it is in undergraduate wit’s nature to be preserved. Try telling a college student that a joke he made yesterday — for example, “The honourable gentlemen have turned their . . . . Continue Reading »

Since the start of the new year, I’ve given away dozens of books from my library, for free, to people I know. First I put all the books I planned on keeping into three boxes, then I filled my bookcase at work with as many of the rest as I could fit and sent a memo . . . . Continue Reading »

La langue de bois , “the wooden tongue,” is a very useful French term for platitudinous windbaggery that combines the worst qualities of politician-speak and bureaucratese. This non-language is generally used when functionaries — up to and including heads of state — have . . . . Continue Reading »