Well, I’ve been fairly restrained on this, but a couple of park pics don’t seem unreasonable.

I’ve cause to thank Henry VIII as we stroll each morning in Regent’s Park, for in 1539, despite already having the hunting grounds of St James’s Park and Nonsuch Palace, he acquired pieces of the manors of Tyburn and Rugmore, from which he made Marylebone Park.

Champ would rather like to do a bit of hunting – of squirrels mainly, and the odd cat, so he hasn’t come off the lead in the park yet. (And probably won’t for some time, for while he understands recall, getting his attention isn’t easy.)

But he is very civilised on the lead – only C-A-T-S cause him to pull. Squirrels just produce a polite little dance of excitement.

So, a second Sir Thomas More has arrived on the London stage within three days. Earlier in the week it was Robert Bolt’s 20th-century version, tonight it was the turn of William Shakespeare et al, with an effort dating back to about 1592. Yet these are two men who share little more than a name. In Bolt’s play, Sir Thomas is a natural aristocrat if not an hereditary one; here he is very much a man of the people, consciously maintaining that persona, always ready with a quip and a jest, to the point of buffoonery.

That makes the job of Nigel Cooke in the title role of the RSC’s production of Thomas More a difficult one. There are scenes in the first Act in which he gets to play the statesman, as we watch the London mob – justly angered by the slights and scams of “foreigners” run rampant – being tamed by the power of their sheriff’s wise words. More reminds them of the Tudor peace they have enjoyed for a generation, then conjures up before them the city they have created by their action – a Hobbesian world in which “men like ravenous fishes would feed on one another”. He reminds them that they too might one day be forced to seek refuge in a foreign land, promises the King’s clemency, and so induces them to lay down their arms.

This is the serious More, a mere sheriff of London, but an admirable man. Then, at the end of this scene, as More is collecting up the rioters’ makeshift weapons, the Earl of Shrewsbury (Tim Treloar) arrives with two for him – the first a sword that marks his knighthood, then the mace that makes him Lord Chancellor. Elevation indeed, and we might expect to see more of the statesman emerge. Yet instead, from this point on we see little more than More the jester. Entertaining the great and good of London, which he’s now gone far beyond, he leaps around the stage like a hyperactive flea, eager to please, and happy to join in with the ragtag bunch of players that has turned up at his door, even the “boy” (Peter Bramhill), in fishnets and bustier, seriously past his prime for the role, who clowns in sexual parody. READ MORE

* A reflection on the art of the introduction, which leaves me wondering if I’ve been spoilt for life for fiction by too many years of newspaper writing? I have been accused in academia of writing too journalistically, but then when I think of Orwell, that’s the sort of writing I like in all context. Cut the adjectives!

* Perhaps it has come out badly in translation, but while the Japanese PM, Junichiro Koizumi, has lots of things going for him, urging women to have lots of litters, like dogs doesn’t raise him in my estimation.

* A sensible take on the latest dodgy “abortion causes depression” study. It contains the figure – which I suppose I should have known, but didn’t – that one in seven mothers suffer from post-natal depression.

Classically fine acting by a evenly excellent cast; a sumptuous set and costumes; beautifully balanced staging; the flowing speech and sharp humour of Robert Bolt – the new production of A Man for All Seasons at the Theatre Royal Haymarket has everything needed for a stunning evening’s entertainment. No complaints at all, except a central one about its moral balance – the compass point is on north, but where is it really pointed?

The fault cannot be laid on today’s actors or director, but the world has changed between 1960, when Bolt wrote the play, and 2006 – perhaps it is we who are unbalanced, not the play. Then, for a man to put absolute trust in the law, as Sir Thomas More does in believing that he can save his life by refusing to speak on his reasons for quitting the King’s service and subsequently refusing to sign the Act of Supremacy, might have been sensible enough. That was before Britain started up locking people without charge or trial in Belmarsh prison, or arresting them for reading out the names of the dead in Iraq in an entirely peaceful political protest.

We still want to believe in the rule of law, but we know all too well that rulers and governments determined to find a way to bring down an individual are all too likely to do so, even in Ye Goode Olde Englande. That belief can only be stronger, when the ruler is Daniel Flynn’s powerful, mercurial, dangerously immature Henry VIII. He swings from childlike pleading, to thunderous anger, to hysterical giggles in an attempt to seduce Martin Shaw’s Sir Thomas to do his bidding in getting rid of his now inconvenient first queen. It is clear that Henry truly believes in each political and religious position, just for so long as it suits him; a tantrum-prone three-year-old is on the throne. READ MORE

… is now up on Reappropriate. And again it is a fascinating collection, with a distinctive “voice”, particularly in the highlight section on “feminisms of colour”.

It is hard to pick out particular links, but I do particularly have to mention the interview with Serap Cileli on Redemption Blues, which was, Jenn, notes, multiply nominated, and well deservedly so.

The whole thing is delightfully arranged – I do particularly like the idea of the “Tapas” section – such an appropriate metaphor!

But, hey, I won’t ramble on here – go over and check out the carnival. And please help to spread the word!

Most of us have an exciting tale, passed down through the generations, that shapes a family’s view of itself. We might live boring, humdrum lives, but a bit of excitement is added by the “fact” that one of our ancestors was a highwayman, or a high-class courtesan, or made some other mark, even a disreputable mark, on history.

James Landale’s family has a solidly based claim to such fame – his ancestor, an otherwise apparently dull but worthy Scottish businessman, fought the last known fatal duel in the nation’s history. But all the family history could tell him about the drama came from one single, small newspaper cutting, a summary that raised more questions than it answered.

And so, intermittently over ten years, Landale set out to uncover the real story, much helped by the manuscript of the evidence of the resulting trial, which was fortuitously collected by one of the lawyers involved. He also found the very pistols used in the duel, in a corner of the small museum in Kirkcaldy.

But Landale sought more than just the individual tale, fascinating as it was. He also wondered why this was the last such clash. So as he follows the days leading up to the meeting of the 40-year-old David Landale, a sober linen trader and merchant, and George Morgan, the hot-head former army officer turned banker, in a muddy, misty field near the North Sea in 1826, he looks back over the history of the duel.

That takes him back to the medieval tales of trial by ordeal – including the wonderful account of the “duelling” greyhound, which avenged his murdered master. He wanders around the continent, tracing the social differences that led it to stick to cold steel, while British increasingly – and eventually almost exclusively – used pistols.

On the Continent, the duelling remained the preserve of the aristocratic class, which still formed the military upper class. So it was that in 1794, when a young French officer, Captain Dupont, was ordered by his general to tell a fellow captain that he was not welcome at a ball, the two came to fight a duel with naked steel. The second man, Fournier, was seriously wounded by a sword thrust, and immediately demanded a rematch. So it came, over 19 years, that they fought regular duels – signing a contract that they would fight any time they came within 100 miles of each other. (Their story was made into a movie by Ridley Scott, called, logically enough, The Duellists.)

Only two under-employed aristocrats, you feel, could dream up and persistently follow through such a caper. In Britain, however, with its growing empire and spreading commercial wealth, the duel spread widely through society, well into the middle classes. Most of these combatants had never been trained with the sword – to try to wield one would be to provoke ridicule, and a quick but nasty death should your opponent be better prepared. This social change also led, as Landale outlines, to a whole industry in printed guides for duelling, for those not brought up with the requisite etiquette. And complex it was indeed, as Landale and Morgan, and their reluctant seconds, demonstrated.

One problem was the status of Morgan; he had been an army officer, but was he a gentleman? Then there was the nature of the conflict. The two had clashed initially when Morgan and his brother, joint agents of the Bank of Scotland, had suddenly refused Landale credit, threatening his commercial standing, his very name in the community, without which no merchant could continue. He’d then written a letter of complaint to their superiors in London. This was a commercial dispute; should it really be settled in a military manner, or taken to the rapidly developing civil courts?

The fact was society was changing so fast that this looked less like an inevitable stage in a conflict between two men, and more like an anacronistic farce. (This was not helped by the fact that one of the surgeons called to assist the combatants had apparently had to attend in his slippers, since his wife had hidden his boots in a bid to stop him attending, for fear of the legal consequences.)

But getting to that point there was much palaver and confusion, until finally Morgan decided to provoke Landale by striking him in public, which could only have one result. (Although his second later told him he’d got the etiquette wrong, and should simply have directly challenged the merchant to a duel.) Landale describes the scene:

The morning of Tuesday August 22 1826 broke cold and damp, rain coursing down on Kirkcaldy’s townsfolk as they scurried to work…. So when George Morgan strolled down the High Street at 10 o’clock for his morning newspaper, he for once was carrying an umbrella rather than his usual cane. He entered James Cumming’s shop, selected a paper and engaged ‘in a little conversation’ as he rummaged in his pocket for a coin. But as he turned to leave, he spotted David Landale passing by outside. He did not hesitate. He rushed out the door and struck David violently across the shoulders with his umbrella.
‘Take you that, Sir!’ he cried.
David staggered back in shock. He had not seen George coming and took the full force of the blow on his shoulders. But, gathering his wits about him, he ran quickly into the shop, before Morgan could get in another blow.
“Mr Cumming, I hope you observed what passed’ he asked the bookseller. Cumming said he had indeed seen it all. But George Morgan was not yet done. He followed David inside. ‘By God, Sir, you shall have more of this yet!’ he yelled and moved forward to strike David again.
Furious at the indignity of this sordid fracas, David exclaimed: ‘I have never got such treatment in my life!’ and ran out before the banker could assault him again. George Morgan made chase but returned to the shop a few minutes later.”

The reader can imagine a Prussian aristocrat shuddering with horror at the scene and the class of the opponents. But now it was that the two men had to meet on that muddy field the next morning. The book is written so that – if you don’t cheat by looking ahead – you won’t know which man walked away from the field and which died there, and I won’t spoil that.

After the trial that followed, Landale then follows the duel to its final end – via two British army officers in India who “duelled” by sharing a darkened room with a lethal snake; one died a few hours later in agony, the other’s hair turned white with shock. He finds it, more or less, on the killing fields of First World War Europe. After that, the whole concept of personal honour or death came to seem meaningless, he concludes.

This is a highly readable book, providing a highly digestable mix of individual and social history covering more than 1,000 years, from the birth of the practice of duelling to its entirely welcome death. It is hard to find anything to criticise, although I would have liked a few footnotes to source some of the great tales for future reference.

* Declaration of interest: I used to work with James on The Times; he’s now a BBC politics correspondent. Useful fact: Kirkcaldy is pronounced kir caw day, for no good reason anyone I met there could explain.