Other Writing

In 2004-2007 I went to Iran three times. This is the story of what I saw on my first nine-day work trip, where I had three very different experiences in three different large cities. I suppose my lasting impression is of a very ancient culture undergoing its own process of modernisation while out of touch with the world, of a substantial divide in the population, and of a culture of risk-taking and conspiracy theories.

Oddly, when I first posted this story online,, it was instantly routed to a...

Flood, J (2024). “Big Dog and Man.” Hecate, vol. 47 no. 1/2, 2021 [2013], pp. 183–198.

Alf was the biggest dog, the most respected dog, and he would always win a fight. He was a loyal and fair companion, and a Pig Dog, there to cover your back fearlessly when the boars broke out of the brush. He was what Merv wanted to be, and never could be.

One of 70 or so posts that eventually ended up in the Unravelling the Code book. This 2007 piece tells the story of the Monmouth Rebellion, the Bloody Assizes, and John Coad who escaped hanging by being transported to the West Indies

The first of half a dozen papers on various Y-haplogroups in Britain. L21 was the main "Celtic" haplogroup in the Isles until the mass arrival of Germanic U106 after 100 BC. More than 29000 people have viewed this paper.

For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened.-Exodus.

First story in a 300 page book of reminiscences, mostly covering the years 1980-82. Our ill-fated trip from Canberra to Melbourne with three small children, where the the car apparently cut out, we bought the ill-fated Leyland P76, and were hit by a vast swarm of locusts.

My family's epic overland journey across Australia in a Masonite caravan to visit Merv Lilley's relatives in Yeppoon Qld in 1961