h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Sat morn here and I's is awake.

You've been busy ABTD and I'll address each post as way of answering you.

153. Marc cure
does this help at all?

No.

154.

Nothing to do with The Cure or Robert Smith and the other members.

155.

>>> Not that Mark Isham? Not Mark Isham - but lt Col Isham - issued forth could mean published....<<<

DGI+1 for 'published', your on the right track here.

156.

>>> Something was turned down? Maybe one's inheritance, if Mark Isham was Ralph Isham's son and turned down his inheritance... Maybe a publishing deal was turned down?<<<

Publishing deal is so very close it's almost it...but not quite, close but no bull's eye.

157.

>>> The word No, issued forth, could just be Mark Isham saying no to an award or a cure, or something completely different...<<<

It is someone saying no, someone declining an offer but it's not Mark Isham as there is no Mark Isham but there is of course a Lieut.-Col. Ralph Heyward Isham.

>>> Is there an award made out of Croquet balls - or is this another anagram?<<<

No, to both there. There is only one anagram in the QI.

>>> BTW does the title have to have anything to do with the answer?<<<

No, not really it's only loosely connected via the groceries and the 'ingrediants' of the QI.

158.

No to those ruminations ABTD

159.

>>>Or more papers were discovered due to Croquet Balls? Not those in the silo?<<<

Bingo! Yes ABTD, well done, more papers were discovered due to croquet balls. I'll explain by popping up another bit of my overall explanation of which I've posted the first part.
DGI+3

And now I jump forward a few years (three to be precise) from our Karichi summer...

1930 and he (Isham) got another shock when Lady Talbot said she had discovered a cardboard box stuffed with additional Boswell papers instead of the expected croquet balls. The papers included another 150 pages of the journal, 110 pages of MS of the Life, letters to and from Boswell, and nothing less than the entire MS of his Tour of The Hebrides.


Well that is all your posts answered and we're nearing the end I think.

So 'Something declined, what and by whom?' is connected to publishing and it leads us to Karichi in 1927.

Does this help? Oh, and I might mention 'Ranks' again...

Ok, before i head of to and a good nights ...

Not publsihing deal but its close - so either a recording deal, or a film deal...

In karachi in summer 1927, maybe the fledgling indian film industry, no doesn't make sense..

Ranks... not the rank film organisation...

So isham being in karachi summer was just a ...

Recording deal makes sense of the clue, issued forth as in spoken? So a recording deal was turned down.

Not sure if it helps but there is a trumpet player called Mark Isham who has been around for many years.

He writes film music too and crosses many genres from jazz to electronic music, he's very prolific.

ABTD, your veering away from publishing and 'Ranks' as in the armed forces.

Our Isham is a retired army officer and as for being in Karachi...hmmm, I'll have to read back as I don't think I said that.

The same theme that links Cook,Boswell,Voltaire et al runs here as well.

Actually there is an anagram and an easy one at that that describes the process of what was turned down and it has to deals with how you eat.

I hope you get the chance to work it out as you've made all the headway so far

Isham turned down a commission? Or a promotion?

Or he turned down the chance of buying the last lot of papers, those found in the silo, believing he'd already got the important stuff, or because he was out of Money.

isham was american, right, so wouldn't have been based in karachi...

Anagram that has to do with how you eat? Chew? Swallow? Bite? Dine or dines
And the process of what was turned down ...

Wallows would be easy anagram
karachi summer, that would be an indian summer, or a warm period in autumn

Isham was retired... maybe was asked to write his memoirs in the autmn of his life, and refused.

...

In India you eat with your left hand......


GT

Ok, I'll try this tack: What links everything we have so far worked out?

Obviously Boswell is the man who links everything and everyone but how is he linked?

Via the letters and the journals of course.

ABTD garnered a reward for publish and then this was written:

>>> Something was turned down? Maybe one's inheritance, if Mark Isham was Ralph Isham's son and turned down his inheritance... Maybe a publishing deal was turned down?<<<

Publishing deal is so very close it's almost it...but not quite, close but no bull's eye. <<<

There's your big clue.

Oh, and just in case you need something else to go on with (as I'm popping in out from the garden at the moment) then the last part of the QI is who declined the thing we haven't worked out yet.

He was and is very,very famous and of a literary bent.

"He was and is very,very famous and of a literary bent."

Too delicious to miss.

Oscar Wilde (played by Kenneth Williams): "Well you know my literary bent."

Marquess of Queensberry (played by Sid James): "No I 'adn't, can it be fixed?"

Was and is very, very famous of a literary bent... something to do with india? Rudyard kipling?

Or is he still alive?

Maybe isham turned down the chance of being in a kipling book?

No, but its the person we're trying to work out who turned down something. Maybe kipling turned down the chance to edit the boswell work?

Success in a roundabout fashion!

Something declined was indeed the chance to edit(diet)the Boswell papers. DGI+3 ABTD.

"The collection was remarkable: about 150 letters from Boswell; over 200 to him from the likes of Burke, Burns, Johnson, Goldsmith, Sir Walter Scott, Rousseau, and Voltaire.
There was the complete manuscript of his, Account of Corsica and a very small amount of the MS of Life of Johnson, this was the disappointing part: where was the rest of 'Life' ? They concluded that it had been destroyed.

Isham wrote the cheque and left with one of the choicest treasures in English literary history - the entire Malahide Boswell collection except for the journals.The Talbot's agreed to give him publishing rights as well.


Isham badly wanted the journals and after coaxing Lady Talbot she relented and let him look at them again and she also tried to convince her husband to relinquish them..
In the meantime Isham ran into the Prof in a London bookshop and offered him the job of editing the papers for a deluxe private edition. Shouting 'You have stolen my mistress,' he declined, pleading bad eyesight. Isham then offered it to ............."


It's not Kipling and he's certainly not still alive.

Ok, which prof btw...

But, some stabs in the dark here at literary figures from 1st half of the 20th cen. In London

feorge bernard shaw
noel coward(?)
ernest hemingway
d.h.lawrence
t.s. eliot

if nothing else that should be good for a couple of klaxons...

Well I've actually lost my original wordpad copy of the klaxon list and other scores so there are very few left.

None of those men fit the bill although our man corresponded with GBS and I'd again mention 'rank', Karachi, 1927,letters and also Biggles.

In that case it must be Captain W.E. johns

Yes it is Johns and in 1922 he signed our man into a branch of the armed forces.

DGI+1 for that ABTD.

Joined the armed forces in 1922? TE Lawrence?

Hang on....

Which one is lawrence of arabia then, dh or te (not that I,d heard of te before now).

What are we looking for now then?

Branch of armed forces?

Air Force is first guess,
army
then Navy.

or still looking for a person? who was signed up into armed forces by johns in 1922, or did Johns sign Isham up?

TE Lawrence was Lawrence of Arabia, and he did his Lawrence of Arabia stuff during WW1. However, between the wars, and in an effort to escape his fame, he joined the RAF under an assumed name of Ross. 1922 sounds about right for this.

A rather unexpected fact about Lawrence is that he was only 5'2" tall.