Six of the Best 223

"Lawyers appear in 11 of his 15 novels. Some of them even resemble humans. Uriah Heep (“David Copperfield”) is a red-eyed cadaver whose 'lank forefinger,' while he reads, makes 'clammy tracks along the page ... like a snail.' Mr. Vholes ('Bleak House'), 'so eager, so bloodless and gaunt,' is 'always looking at the client, as if he were making a lingering meal of him with his eyes.' Most lawyers infest dimly lighted, moldy offices 'like maggots in nuts.' In the New York Times, Joseph Tartakovsky consider birthday boy Charles Dickens' treatment of lawyers.

The business case for HS2 - the new high-speed railway line from London to Birmingham and, ultimately, the North - rests on flimsy foundations, argues Christian Wolmar.

A briefing sheet from 20's Plenty argues that school safety zones are not a priority when children need a community-wide 20mph speed limit: "What of the child who walks or cycles all the way from their home to school? The school safety zone now only works for 17 per cent of their journey. For drivers isolated 20mph school safety zones reinforce and legitimise driving at faster speeds outside of the immediate school location, hence increasing the risk to pedestrian and cycling children."

The Evergreen Cooperatives initiative is harnessing the spending power of hospitals and universities to rebuild local economies in Cleveland, Ohio, reports Clare Goff on NewStart.

JS Blog - Journal of a Southern Bookreader visits Salisbury Cathedral and the memorial to this blog's hero (and the subject of my MA dissertation) Richard Jefferies.

A selection of photographs of Covent Garden from 1973, when the vegetable market was still in operation there, can be found on Retronaut.