What has this got to do with this blog or with running?
It was the Chronicle that first sparked the idea in my head of entering for the Bath Half Marathon. The paper gave the opportunity to local people to put in an early entry to the Bath Half using a two-piece code that was provided in 2 weekly editions.
And I did - as described under Auction Fever in my earlier post Reasons Why.
The celebratory 250 anniversary edition - issued last week - describes the early Chronicles as being:-
"A mixture of the bizarre and the banal, of the ludicrous and the tragic."Not that different from today - especially the Readers‘ Letters.
Some reports down the years read remarkably alike. The report of the bombing of The Corridor in 1974 and that of the exploding gas cylinders at the SouthGate were similar - at least in the described experience of the journalists concentrating on their routine reports only to be interrupted by the sound of explosions.
Another theme down the years is reports of visiting celebrities - and those later to become famous.
These include:-
- Princess Victoria in 1830 before she was Queen
- Winston S Churchill - an obscure parliamentary candidate whose first ever political speech was at Claverton Manor (The American Museum) in 1897
- The Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie in 1936 - afterwards lived in Bath during his exile years
- Princess Diana - visited Bath in 1985
- Michael Palin in 2010.
"The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous -licentious - abominable - infernal - Not that I ever read them - no - I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper." Richard Brinsley Sheriden
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