@rcolvile@thhamilton This is fun but misleading. The reason he says she clearly hadn't been close enough to touch it is because he's confident it *was* stone — an earlier paragraph implies he was privy to information about the commissioning of it, though not directly involved.
@rcolvile IIRC, Bottomley in this case was another traditional figure in newspaper history: the printer who quickly takes possession when the lads can't pay his bill. (He then fell out with the other partner in the printing firm, who got the FT in the split.)
@SnoozeInBrief Whatever the strategy, precision is clearly important to it; there used to be a rival 95p+ shop a few doors down towards the Rye, and it has not survived.
@Samfr The change over time is interesting. Telegraph readers were 64% Conservative and 14% Labour in 2005, per the table at the end of this Guardian post, while the Sun numbers look to have barely moved: https://t.co/muqKCTjniM
@legalstyleblog@davecykl@HoskingTheTimes The paragraph spacing is indeed weird, but it could easily be a printer's last-minute response to a copy shortfall (or to someone pulling a par out, if you want something more conspiratorial).
@legalstyleblog@davecykl@HoskingTheTimes The type also looks right for the period, and has printing artefacts and page glare that I think would still be fiddly to fake.
@yngvlgrn @philipjcowley The potentially more interesting thing about induction hobs is that you can buy a plug-in portable one that will heat up steel/iron-based pans faster than a gas burner for not much; there's a Tefal one under sixty quid at Job Lewis right now
@yorksranter @Fornbirkibeinn @PreachyPreach @CentristMum @AlunEphraim @OwenWMichael @BeijingPalmer @marwood_lennox@jkbloodtreasure An obituary writer once told me that the thing he found hardest to convey was: "This person was an unmarried heterosexual." I'd guess "This person was a strongly extroverted non-drunkard" presents the same sort of challenge.
@Griboyedov1@stephenkb@PreachyPreach @BeijingPalmer @yorksranter And to survive as an image of a figure that may keep getting cited in social history — the 1950s Angry Young Man — "Lucky Jim" has just to outrun "Room at the Top" and "Look Back in Anger". Possible it's managed that already.
@JonnElledge@JenWilliams_FT Sometimes it feels better not to know the reason. On a motionless late-night suburban train in London Victoria, I once heard the announcement, "We are awaiting two things: a driver and the police."