by Nigel Scotchmer | Jan 13, 2026 | Essays
Can’t get enough of irony, can we? So, we created a club. Welcome one and all! We would like to thank you for subscribing to The Ironist and for your kind encouragement over the past two years. It has meant more to us than we can easily say. As a result, we have...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Dec 30, 2025 | Essays
The new year is here… As the year turns, I find myself thinking about what we carry forward and what truly matters. The grand sweep of The Lord of the Rings enthralled me in high school. I had read it two or three times by the time I reached university. It was...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Dec 16, 2025 | Essays
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness – Wordsworth, Independence and Resolution, Stanza VII Children prove we all seek a better life. They quickly learn that walking helps them . They learn that talking gets...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Oct 14, 2025 | Humour
Nigel explains how the Roman precursor to our modern toilet brush, the xylospongium, gave us our grilled meat on a stick, our modern kebabs…and then he concludes with an original Parthian recipe. The other day, while fulminating on the algorithmic vacuity of Facebook,...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Oct 2, 2025 | Essays
Nigel writes an encomium for the Cost of Glory… Twenty minutes on the rowing machine and the display will dutifully say I have rowed 3.7 kilometres. But that is not really where I am. In my mind, memories merge. I am rowing from Miletus on the Maeander to...