Great review of a kids picture buke. If mine were younger, they would absolutely be bought this. This panel alone is just great

You'll love the second crash, the one that took him out of the race in its final hours. It is a lovely book.

Café Bookshelf: the one in which I enjoy a kids' picture book (ages 7-10) about the teenage years of Major Taylor, 19th-century World Champion and 21st-century sporting icon.

Café Bookshelf: Major Taylor, by Charles R Smith Jr, illustrated by Leo Espinosa

Major Taylor’s one and only entry in a Six Day race in 1896 becomes a framing device in this kids’ picture book (7-10 years) telling the story of the teenage years of one of cycling’s first superstars...

Ouch! That hotel room scene in Slow Horses was a bit close to the bonesaw.

Louis MacNeice, on Dublin: Fort of the Dane, Garrison of the Saxon, Augustan capital Of a Gaelic nation, Appropriating all The alien brought, You give me time for thought And that's before we got back to the Book of invasions and meet the Firbolg and the Milesians and the Tuatha Dé etc.

So let me get this right: the Southern Syncopated Orchestra performing in Dublin for a fortnight, and then performing in Derry and Belfast, that shows Ireland was a diverse country even in the 1920s? Dunno, this sounds a bit like Americans confusing having been somewhere with being from somewhere.

Who knew, eh? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Who are ‘the Irish’? History shows we’ve been a mixed bunch for centuries | Maurice J Casey

The far right demands a pure ‘Irishness’. But our island story has long been interwoven with other ethnicities and diasporas, writes historian Maurice J Casey

That love of narrative has really buggered things up for us.

So I can explain the origin of the fake history. But I struggle with why it is still believed, when it is relatively easy to check the truth of many of these stories today. Also: enjoyed your Fake History book. V enjoyable.