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By Kelly Grovier 3 March 2017 Every word conceals a story, a secret history. Behind the syllables we use every day lurk countless forgotten tales. “If you know the origin of a word”, the 6th Century scholar Isidore of Seville insisted, “everything can be more clearly comprehended”. While most words slip into currency inconspicuously and without leaving traceable trails of their journeys, there is an elite class of verbal inventions whose exact dates of initial utterance have indeed been carefully recorded. Some of these words are the one-off brainchildren of individuals who have long faded into the fog of history. Others are the concoctions of cultural pioneers who deliberately set out to shape the way future generations think and speak. In every instance what is remarkable is how the unlocking of a word’s biography helps us unlock both the biography of the individual who coined it as well as the age in which he or she lived. What follows are eight intriguing coinages tha...

Guerrilla Idris Elba co-stars in his first TV drama since BBC One’s Luther alongside Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) and Babou Ceesay in this six-part drama by 12 Years a Slave writer John Ridley, about a radical underground cell in 1970s London. Asking what might have happened if Black Power groups in the UK took up arms in their fight for equal rights, Guerrilla tells the story of a couple whose relationship is tested when they get swept up in radical activism and go head-to-head with abusive police and a racist system. Better Call Saul When things start to get tough, legally speaking, for Walter White in Breaking Bad season two, Jesse Pinkman tells him: “You don’t want a criminal lawyer – you want a ‘criminal’ lawyer.” Even if you gave up on the saga mid-way through, this charming prequel spin-off showing how fledgling and law-abiding attorney Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) transforms into the amoral lawyer Saul Goodman, is still worth watching as it stands firmly on ...

Those who ceaselessly preach human rights and democracy but insist they themselves must be above the rules they want to apply to everybody else will not have appreciated such straight talk. The biggest problem though is that there are many – even amongst our ranks – that have drunk very deeply on the notion that the unequal status quo in international relations is natural and should be maintained. The psychological ravages of centuries of being taught about the “white man’s” civilizing mission of the darker skinned people, of accepting the view of their own inferiority and therefore the rightness of the unequal international structure of relations are hard to undo. The incredible belief by some Africans in “nos ancêstres les Gaulois” or that this or that white man discovered Lake Victoria or the source of the Nile are very hard to uproot. And until we do and understand what canards all these are, we shall not break from the mental shackles which make us continue to accept the ...

.   He collects Porsches via blog.hemmings.com Gates has been spotted driving a 2008 Ford Focus, but only on his time off from his Porsche 911 Carrera, Porsche 930 and Porsche 959 Coupe. Funny story; the 959 used to be banned in the US for its unknown crash safety, and Gates’ model sat for a decade at the Port of Seattle once he had it shipped to the US. He didn’t get to drive it until 1999 when President Bill Clinton passed a law exempting certain collectible cars from safety regulations. Knowing Gates, he probably waited a decade, just for appearances, and then made some calls… 14 .   He makes a lot of wrong predictions via thehindu.com He might be a smarty pants by most standards, but Gates has a history of bold predictions that fall flat on their face. He gets harangued for once claiming that PC users would never need more than 640 kb of memory — he denies ever having said that, now, of course. In 1989 though, even Forbes got him on record th...