Happy Halloween, Hallowe'en and Hallows' Eve to all my followers and readers! As an author with a passion for language and history, I thought I might use this year's spooky season to share some light etymology about the word "Halloween". While modern Halloween celebrations are now often thought of as being quite an American tradition, it wasn't introduced or acknowledged across the pond until quite recently, brought largely by Scottish and Irish settlers' influence as they mo

“All we own, we owe...”, “All we own, we owe...” was once a humorous interpretation by The Simpsons of the nonsensical chant by the guards in The Wizard Of Oz back in 1993, but thirty-three years later, it has become an eerily accurate statement about our modern lives. Like most of you reading this, I’m sure, I like to watch a bit of telly of an evening, and like most of you, my television habits have changed drastically over the years as the technology has ‘improved’. Or has

Katherine Ryan, the Canadian born comedian who has become a recognisable face on British television over the past few years owing to her crude humour, extreme plastic surgery, and strong feminist ideals (or – at least – her interpretation of modern feminism), has found herself in hot water in the past week after an enquiry into her recent presenting stint on the popular BBC news satire show, Have I Got News For You, where a crude and rather unkind joke about Victoria Beckham