Welcome to my web document. This is not the first time I've created a web page, but I've largely forgotten what I did on my M.A. course two years ago. My course is at the

I am now going to insert an article from the Guardian by Andrew Moncur to play about with.

Why didn't Monica change her moniker?

Sorry, but there's something odd and niggling about this White House affair. Look at it how you will, is Monica really a likely name for a woman at the centre of a sex scandal? I mean, if you were casting characters for a drama on these lines would you dream of choosing that name for the female lead? All experience suggests that when scandals are blown, lids are lifted, names are named and your femme fatale stands exposed in the wreckage, she doesn't answer to Monica. Monica? The Full Monica? It somehow just doesn't ring true.

You disagree?

Then answer these three questions:

Would anyone be taken seriously as a sexpot spy, worthy of being shot by firing squad, if her name was Monica Hari?
Can you imagine a government being brought tottering to the brink of disaster by a blonde called Monica Rice-Davies?
Is it conceivable that the late John Kennedy would have launched himself bodily at a film star named Monica Monroe?

Excuse me. Hold it right there. On reflection, please ignore question three. All available evidence suggests JFK could easily have taken a lunge at a woman called virtually anything.

Coverage of the White House affair has brought to light dramatis personae including: Phineus Shelnot (husband of Gennifer Flowers); Webster Hubbell (his brother-in-law); Schmucko Clinton (no relation); Richard Mellon Scaife (jobbing billionaire); and Ritz Carlton (which turns out, disappointingly, to be an hotel).

I ask you, where else in the world but the US would a Dale Bumpers rise to high office? To pluck a few more from the air, details have been emerging this week of the career of a suspected serial killer hailing from Carbondale, Illinois. The cast list in this case includes John Swango (a poisoner); Brent Unmisig (an intended victim - and not, as you might have supposed, an oil rig); Mark Krzystofczyk (another victim, although easily confused with the average Scrabble bag); and Terro Ant Killer (not a person, sadly, but the accused's poison of choice). These wonderful names abound in the United States. Take any group, more or less at random.

You need only glance at, say, the trustees of the Washington-based National Geographic Society. I give you:

John D Blodger;
Kitty Carroll Colbert;
J Scott Crystal;
Jimmie D Pridemore;
A Leon Higginbotham;
Floretta Dukes McKenzie;
Nathaniel P Reed;
B Francis Saul II; and
Lanny M Proffer.

Where in Britain must we look for names of such rich variety? I could make a suggestion: try the graveyard.
That's where your Cloudesley Shovels, Stringer Lawrences and Clintons now reside. I'm thinking of Henry Pelham Fiennes Pelham (yes, again) Clinton, the fourth Duke of Newcastle under Lyme, who died in 1851. Or possibly of his son, the fifth Duke, who had precisely the same string of names and who went to his rest in 1864. I find it hard to believe that either of them ever laid hands on anybody called Monica. Or any other organ, come to that.

I am now going to insert a totally gratuitous picture my cat Billie.

Further to this, I am also going to put in the flag of one of my two nationalities

This page was created by

Eleanor Craig -University of Sussex - Last modified 2nd July, 1998