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Fun fact: in parts of England, a "bar" means a gate. A "gate", on the other hand, is a street (related to "gade" in Scandinavian languages and "Gasse" in German). Trips to York can be confusing for foreign tourists.

As long as we're nitpicking about languages and accents: when a foreign person speaks English, they'll be able to hold a deep, meaningful conversation in English, or explain the workings of gravity and space-time and world lines, or whatever. But they'll still say the simplest things like...

It might work for portfolio investments, but those amounts would require multiple sign-offs, and any asset manager would get in touch with the account holder personally to verify instructions. But the thing is, that's not how HNW people hold the bulk of their assets. I remember some mention...

Ged faces off against Jasper in Ursula LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea. It's perhaps a little tame by modern standards, but it's an excellent scene, and the climax is huge.

The BBC reviewed it last week. I might watch it for brainless entertainment.

All this talk of the RAF is putting me in mind of the Armstrong & Miller sketches.

In most countries, perhaps, but I think in Britain people would always say the RAF. After WWII, and all the WWII movies of the fifties and sixties, it's become part of the cultural identity. The Army, the Navy and the RAF. Then again, I haven't lived there since I was a kid, and things might...

Perhaps the RAF Regiment?

Pah, 19 years old is nothing. I have underwear older than this thread!

I even submit that you'd have to look long and hard to find a British civilian who'd make the mistake. It's the RAF.

I dunno, I thought it worked quite well. As long as you see Boromir and Faramir as essentially two versions of the same character. Faramir is the version that manages to overcome the Ring's lure, but we need to see its effect on him. Otherwise Boromire would also have been a weaker character.

There's underwear in Andor.

Back in my day, we had to put up with inconsistencies and mistakes in Star Wars, and we liked it that way!

Dan Brown... The whole premise of the Da Vinci Code falls apart if you know the very basics of the background to the Grail legend. (Spoiler: no, there's no possible way it could ever be "sang real".)

In Bones, one of the characters, Hodgins, is mega-rich. As in, one of the richest people in the world. When the psycho serial killer needs a diversion to help him escape, he steals Hodgins's wealth. Just by hacking into his account. They sit and watch as his money drains away, and he's left with...

Clearly this version of Dulles airport exists in its own specific dimension, where approaching planes can't divert to another airport if they're unable to establish contact with the airport they're supposed to be going to.

I came across a theory a while back that suggested that the Pillars of Hercules were the Straight of Messina, and that Atlantis was modern-day Sardinia. If nothing else, it seems to fit distance-wise. Somewhere in the Atlantic always struck me as a bit too far from the cultures centred around...

Where do you get that he has mental health issues? Because so far all I've seen is entitlement and self-importance. "Demetrious Polychron", seriously? Although I'll admit he has more nerve than I'd ever have

Christopher Tolkien was still actively publishing books based on his father's works and notes just five years ago. I'd say the property is very much alive.

Not every work, of course, but a high-profile work such as LotR? Does no-one think, "Hmm, strange, I haven't seen marketing for an officially licensed sequel."