I haven't played the original video game, and knew nothing about the plot going in other than that it posits the same fungal plague as The Girl with All the Gifts. The story has parallels with both TGwAtG and The Passage, though the tone s closer to the latter.

The central relationship between Joel and Ellie is beautifully played and completely believable. I was glued to the screen during Bill and Frank's story, only lightly connected to the main plot but so important for our sense of the wider world.

The evergreen kaiju forest.

'Guns not butter'

75 benefits? Yet when Rees-Mogg was given the sinecure government job of finding Brexit benefits, he could barely come up with any.

That's a fun story without a murder, featuring Holmes manifesting a man from a hat, and with some surprisingly interesting social history about poultry supply chains. (Did the Cratchits, a few decades earlier, also get their goose from a Christmas club?)

We're currently on 'The Six Napoleons', a story with the distinction of having inspired not one, but two Three Investigators mysteries. Part two is next week, then I'm guessing they will do 'The Blue Carbuncle' for Christmas.

I see from my previous post that seasons 7-8 also dropped in December, and I actually did wait till this summer to watch them! Intrigued to find out about Amanda's baby though...

Thanks. I noticed that last night. I don't know whether to plunge in or wait for the appropriate season of the year.

Some scholars think that Samuel Johnson had Tourette syndrome, based on accounts of his verbal, physical and behavioural tics.

The convention of using the mother's family surname as a middle name produced some pretty cool names.

Surely she knows that Christianity emerged in an economy based on slavery (and opposed it)? That the medieval church helped alleviate poverty? That the creation of secular public relief in England was partly a consequence of the Reformation impacting the church's earlier work?

I do like the 1980s Viragos.

Season two didn't so much open with a hard reset as painful whiplash.

Hope it goes with as few hitches as possible and you're able to get settled before the holidays.

If you haven't already read it, Aldington writes about the challenge of translating this book in his memoir, Life for Life's Sake.

A bit unclear - there isn't a 'cash ISA limit' now. The £20k limit is a total cap on any combination of ISAs, except for the lifetime ISA.

Does this mean that the overall cap will stay at £20k but only £12k of that can be in cash?

I can understand why the book's original ending would be hard to sell to audiences in the wake of real events. And you could read the cheerier ending the film gives us as someone's wishful imagining, rather than an alternative reality. But it does feel like it was hacked about post test screenings.