Recent Wallace news

There are several things I would like to tell you about, and since each item is not long enough for a whole blog post I have decided to combine them all into one.

The first thing I would like to report is that the EDIT Scratchpad system which hosts this site, has apparently been completely overloaded by web traffic and in order to limit usage and maintain the stability of the system, the manager has decided to block web crawlers, including Google. This means that the Google ranking of the Wallace Website has dropped dramatically, to such an extent that the site is now very difficult to find on Google. Previously it was right at the top of search results for "Alfred Russel Wallace", "Wallace Website" etc! Fortunately hits on the site have not dropped much, so people are obviously still accessing it. This situation will only be rectified when the Scratchpads move to a new more powerful server, and this won't happen until after December 2010. One other unrelated problem with the Scratchpads is that the image module has been 'upgraded' so now the titles of the images in the Image Galleries are so brief as to be uninformative and the thumbnails are cropped around their edges so that in many cases images of Wallace have part or all of his head removed (see http://wallacefund.info/category/image-galleries/images-wallace-0)! Since these changes (in my view) make the Image Galleries difficult to use I will be moving them over to a Picasa Web Album, which I will link to from this site. I have already created one and have uploaded some images into it - see http://picasaweb.google.com/WallaceMemorialFund I hope you agree that it looks a lot better - which is important as most of the Wallace Fund's income is derived from sales of images.

On a happier note, Geinor Styles the Artistic Director of Theatr na n'Óg tells me that her play about Wallace, which has recently been translated into Portuguese and performed in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, has been a great success. You can read all about Geinor's trip to Brazil on her blog here:- http://geinor-inthefootstepsofwallace.blogspot.com/2010/07/here-we-go.html?spref=fb Geinor also tells me that Theatr na n'Óg "have received funding from the Arts council of Wales to create a Wallace on the Web project for our schools in South Wales to go on an interactive expedition like Wallace and for us to link the children in Wales with young people in Rio, using the play about Wallace as a catalyst to learn more about their own environment." Well done Geinor and good luck with it!

Finally, I would like to draw you attention to a new historical thriller which features Wallace. It is by author Denise Meredith and will be on sale on October the 26th 2010 on Amazon. More information about the book can be found on Denise's website:- http://sites.google.com/site/demeredith1/alfred-russel-wallace 

Here is a summary of the story:- "London in 1856 is gripped by a frightening obsession.  The specimen-collecting craze is growing, and discoveries in far-off jungles are reshaping the known world in terrible and unimaginable ways. The new theories of evolution threaten to disrupt the fragile balance of power that keeps the chaotic city in order—a disruption that many would do just about anything to prevent.

When the glamorous Lady Bessingham is found murdered in her bedroom, surrounded by her vast collection of fossils and tribal masks, Adolphus Hatton and his morgue assistant Albert Roumande are called in to examine the crime scene—and the body. In the new and suspicious world of forensics and autopsy examinations, Hatton and Roumande are the best. But the crime scene is not confined to one room. In their efforts to help Scotland Yard’s infamous Inspector Adams track down the Lady’s killer, Hatton and Roumande uncover a trail of murders all connected to a packet of seditious letters that, if published, would change the face of society and religion irrevocably.

Denise Meredith’s measured prose and eye for exquisite detail moves seamlessly from the filthy docks on the Isle of Dogs to the jungles of Borneo and the drawing rooms of London’s upper class. Her slow-burning mystery builds to a shocking conclusion, consuming victims—and Victorian London—as it goes."

Exciting stuff! I can't wait until I get my copy!