X-Nico

14 unusual facts about the Observer


Cross-check

The problem to the right, also by G. F. Anderson (first published in The Observer in 1961) and also a mate in two, features no less than five cross-checks.

Donald Kirk

Don was correspondent for The Observer (London) in Japan and Korea in the late 1970s and 1980s, covering the assassination of President Park Chung-hee of Korea in 1979, the Gwangju revolt in 1980, and financial, diplomatic and political issues in Japan for the Observer and newspapers in the U.S. and Canada.

Dream Mile

This was described by Duncan Mackay in The Observer as "...a race to rival the 'Miracle Mile' taking middle-distance running into a new era. To many it still remains the greatest 1,500m race ever."

Giovanni Cheli

After turning eighty, Cardinals Cheli and Silvestrini came to be seen as the bluntest critics of the rule on over-age cardinals, with Cheli on Silvestrini's 80th birthday (five years after himself turning eighty) saying to The Observer in December 2003: "It is a great deprivation for cardinals. Perhaps different limits can be used in future. Perhaps those whose minds have gone should not vote. We all know who they are. And some of them are in their seventies."

Hugh Turvey

Hugh’s work attracted the interest of the Science Photo Library, who encouraged him to produce an extensive series of coloured x-rays of everyday objects, which were eventually published during 1999 in the Observer’s LIFE magazine.

John Masouri

John has also written articles on reggae for Mojo, Music Week, The Guardian, The Observer and NME, as well as magazines in the US (The Beat), Japan (RM) and Germany (Riddim).

Penet remailer

In August 1996, a major British newspaper, The Observer, published an article describing the Penet remailer as a major hub of child pornography, quoting a United States FBI investigator named Toby Tyler as saying that Penet was responsible for between 75% and 90% of the child pornography being distributed on the Internet.

Philippe Gigantès

After the war, he became a journalist, working for the London Observer, in Greece, North Africa, and South Asia, from 1946 to 1961.

Portsalon

It's situated on the scenic Lough Swilly and it is world-renowned for its beach, which was deemed to be the second most beautiful beach in the world by The Observer.

Roger Tiley

On completion of the course in 1984, Tiley worked for a number of national newspapers and magazines, including The Times, Sunday Times, The Guardian and The Observer.

Spying on the United Nations

The British newspaper The Observer published an investigative report revealing that the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States was conducting a secret surveillance operation directed at intercepting the telephone and email communications of several U.N. Security Council diplomats, both in their offices and in their homes.

The Burning Wire

Alison Flood from The Observer criticised Deaver for burdening the flow of the story with electrical knowledge, stating that "the endless paragraphs explaining how the electricity grid works slow the plot down, throwing the reader out of the race to stop the villain...", as well as the lack of character development of Rhyme's partner, Amelia Sachs.

The Observer

These disagreements ultimately led Northcliffe to sell the paper to William Waldorf Astor in 1911, who transferred ownership to his son Waldorf four years later.

The Yellow Iris

Joyce Grenfell reviewed the play in The Observers edition of 7 November 1937 when she said, "I had hoped to say such nice things about Agatha Christie's Yellow Iris" but found that Holles was, "the only happy thing in the broadcast".


Al Alvarez

From 1956 to 1966, he was the poetry editor and critic for The Observer, where he introduced British readers to John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Zbigniew Herbert, and Miroslav Holub.

Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within

Viv Groskop for The Observer wrote, the book focuses on the failed Ryazan bombings "in excruciating, rambling detail", but it fails to describe convincingly the involvement of Russian state security services in organizing the Russian apartment bombings and "lack of transparency makes it difficult to read it as more than conspiracy theory.

Charles Glass

He writes regularly for The Spectator, was ABC News chief Middle East correspondent from 1983–93, and has worked as a correspondent for Newsweek and The Observer.

David Chipp

After retirement from the PA from Chipp took up a number of part-time positions including an independent director of The Observer, a board member of TV-am and Teletext.

Elspeth Thompson

She also presented a popular four-part series on trees for BBC Radio 4, and wrote on gardening and interiors for The Sunday Telegraph, the Observer and the Guardian.

Emma Dodd

During the early part of her career, Emma worked in advertising and editorial, for clients including Volvo, BMW, Pentagram (NYC and London), Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew), The Guardian, The Observer, Sunday Express and She Magazine.

Eric Rhode

His writing on film appeared in Sight and Sound, The Listener, Encounter, The Observer; he contributed pieces on literature and art to the New Statesman and The Financial Times, while the New Society and The Times Literary Supplement published pieces on psychoanalytic topics, and occasional pieces ran in The Sunday Times.

Francis Graham Lodge

Lodge exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1933, He was also an artist with Everyman(1929-1931), the Observer(1929-1934) and the Radio Times.

Graffiti My Soul

The Observer described "Graffiti" as a standout track on Girls Aloud's album, describing it as "a full-scale collision between Madonna, Michael Jackson and the Prodigy".

Hemel Hempstead Evening Post-Echo

They included Melanie Phillips (Daily Mail), Stephen Pile (Sunday Telegraph), David Francis (Mail on Sunday), Cliff Barr (The Sun, Daily Express), Lee Harrison and John Cathcart (National Enquirer), Anthony Holden (Sunday Times and The Observer), Maurice Chittenden (Sunday Times), Jean Ritchie (The Sun), Mark Milner (The Guardian), and David Felton (The Independent).

John Heilpern

He began his career at The Observer of London, where his interviews with numerous cultural figures (including Graham Greene, Rudolf Nureyev, Henry Moore, Artur Rubinstein, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson) received a British Press Award.

Keswick Mountain Festival

According to The Observer, the festival is "one of the few places on the planet where Gore-Tex and gaiters might actually help you to pull".

Leela Floyd

She taught music for several years and has written for newspapers and magazines including the Times Educational Supplement, The Observer, ArtRage, and Yours magazine; she is a regular adjudicator at the Music For Youth festival in the UK.

Lo Hsing Han

According to a report in The Observer, he helped organize the opulent 2006 wedding of the daughter of the Burmese dictator Than Shwe.

Lorna Sage

Sage's book reviews appeared in the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times Book Review and The Observer, mentioning the works of Angela Carter, as well as covering studies of works of numerous authors, including Christina Stead, Doris Lessing, Thomas Love Peacock, John Milton and Thomas Hardy.

Magnus Linklater

This was followed by three years at The Observer, before he was recruited to launch and edit the London Daily News, a short-lived newspaper owned by Robert Maxwell.

Martin Bright

He worked for the BBC World Service and The Guardian before becoming The Observer's education correspondent and then home affairs editor.

Martin Wight

In 1946, Wight was recruited by David Astor, then editor of The Observer to act as the newspaper's correspondent at the inaugural sessions of the United Nations at Lake Success.

Michael Bywater

He was a long-running columnist for The Independent on Sunday, an early futurist for The Observer, spent ten years on the staff of Punch, where he wrote a regular computer column and the anonymous "Bargepole" column, as well as having written regularly for The Times, and been a contributing editor to Cosmopolitan and Woman's Journal.

Michael Melford

From 1946 to 1950 he had been the athletics correspondent for The Observer, a position he subsequently held for a while at the Telegraph, covering the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956 and in Rome four years later.

Paul Hoggart

He has also written for The Guardian, Observer, The Independent, Daily Telegraph, Radio Times, Broadcast, The Stage, Saga and Young Performer magazines, and the screenwriters’ website twelvepoint.com.

Philip Llewellin

In 1969 he became a freelance writer and one of his first commissions was an article on the musician and actor Tommy Steele for The Observer magazine.

Pongo de Mainique

In a 2006 survey of "15 of the world's top travel writers" by The Observer, Monty Python actor and BBC travel documentarist Michael Palin named it his "favourite place in the world".

Richard Harries, Baron Harries of Pentregarth

These include The Passion in Art (Ashgate 2004) and Art and the Beauty of God (Continuum 2000), which was chosen as a book of the year by the late Anthony Burgess in The Observer, when it was originally published in 1993.

Romola Butalia

As a freelance journalist, she has written for major Indian newspapers and magazines including The Times of India, The Economic Times, The Independent, Gentleman, The Observer and Pioneer.

Rory Carroll

On 3 July 2011, The Observer published an article by Carroll featuring an interview with Noam Chomsky concerning the detention of Maria Lourdes Afiuni, an arrested Venezuelan judge, in which Chomsky criticised the government of Hugo Chávez.

Rose Hersee

Hersee was the daughter of Henry Hersee (1820–1896), a teacher, critic for The Observer, librettist of Cowen's Pauline (1876), and translator of operas including The Merry Wives of Windsor, Carmen and Aida.

Terry Dicks

On Farzad Bazoft, an Observer journalist hanged by Saddam Hussein in 1990, Dicks said he "deserved to be hanged" on the eve of his execution.

Towards the End of the Morning

Towards was Frayn's third book after The Tin Men and The Russian Interpreter, and is probably based on his experiences at The Observer from 1962 to 1968.