Tuesday 28 April 2009

Paine's 18th century bridge

Here we have a picture of the attractive little bridge Paine built around 1750 to cross the river Wansbeck on the Wallington estate. There's a second picture further down the page with a vehicle going across to give some sense of scale.

It is definitely only wide enough for one car at a time. Though the river looks nothing more than an ambling stream, which it is, mostly, this is the river than devastated Morpeth a few months ago.




The public library, inundated and out of action for such a long time, is only now getting back to normal.
I spotted TheRichList yesterday, and sad to say there are few authors listed.
The numbers refer to the Rank in the list this year, followed by rank last year, then the name, the current wealth and the losses suffered due to this year's credit crunch:


101 (144) Joanne Rowling £499m Fall £61m Novels, Films
344 (510) Barbara Taylor Bradford £166m £7m Novels
600 (879) Jackie Collins £90m no change Novels
863 Lord Archer £65m £7m Novels
1077 Jack Higgins £50m £10m Novels
1348 Sir Terry Pratchett £40m no change Novels
1771 Katie Price £30m -Fashion

Not exactly inspiring, is it? Just as a comparison, here is the Queen:
244 (260) The Queen 270m Fall of £50m

3 comments:

Linda Banche said...

We know most authors make very little money for all our effort. Someone described it as "5% of the authors make 95% of the money", which probably is fairly accurate.

Jen Black said...

It's true for most things in life, isn't it? I put it down to luck and timeing myself!
Jen

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

More flames on the fire

  Occasionally I check for Book related news and  this morning caught a snippet that sent a shudder through me. It seems Omid Scobie, often ...