Simon Sellars: Sleepy Brain Archives

Saturday, Jul 7th, 2007 at 5:09 pm

Brit Blog: Cardiff

Me outside a Cardiff church (photo: Simon Sellars).
I’ve always been fascinated by Wales. It’s something to do with my interest in ‘edge culture’, with distorted cultural mirrors sharding mainline nationalism into fragments. I used to hear English people put down the Welsh, mocking their accents and their tradition, and it fascinated me. Not the racism, […]

Monday, Jun 18th, 2007 at 12:29 pm

Brit Blog: Norwich

A view of the ziggurat student quarters at Norwich’s University of East Anglia. This is Brutalism at its finest. (Photo: Simon Sellars 2007).
I woke on the train to Norwich.
I don’t know much at all about Norwich, except a bit about their football team. In John King’s book The Football Factory, the narrator, Tom, recalls how […]

Wednesday, Jun 13th, 2007 at 1:27 am

Brit Blog: On the Way

‘Hey now, baby, I’m beginning to see the light…’ The author, waiting to go through customs, ponders the notion of ‘flightless travel’ (photo: Simon Sellars 2007).
At one stage I used to listen to people whingeing about long plane flights and think they were dullards with no imagination, that I was above them (literally) because I […]

Friday, Jan 19th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

Melbourne Welcomes You

Station Pier (photo: Simon Sellars). There used to be a sign here saying ‘Melbourne Welcomes You’, the first thing we saw when we got off the boat, I imagine.
I was asked to contribute some thoughts about my family’s immigration story to the second book in Jim Hammerton’s ‘Ten-Pound Poms’ series. Ours is a strange tale, […]

Sunday, Jan 14th, 2007 at 2:17 pm

Micronations Competition Winner

Finally, we are in a position to announce the winner of our Micronations competition, where we asked readers to invent their own micronation for the chance to win a copy of the new Lonely Planet book on home-made nations (or model states, or micronations; whatever you care to call them).
And the winner is Adam Kadmon, […]

Saturday, Dec 30th, 2006 at 9:13 pm

Micronations Competition: An Update

Sorry for the delay: I’ll be announcing the winner of our Micronations competition very soon…as soon as I get over this terrible flu.
More soon.

Friday, Dec 8th, 2006 at 11:02 pm

Win A Copy of Lonely Planet’s Micronations

COMPETITION: Win a copy of Lonely Planet’s new book on Micronations by entering our competition to design your own model nation.

Tuesday, Nov 28th, 2006 at 1:03 am

Lonely Planet’s Micronations, Part 3: The Republic of Molossia

For the third part of our special feature on Lonely Planet’s new guide to Micronations, we present an extract from the book – the entry on the Republic of Molossia.
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THE REPUBLIC OF MOLOSSIA

His Excellency, Kevin Baugh, President of Molossia (photo courtesy Republic of Molossia).
The Republic of Molossia is surely the most delightful micronation on earth. […]

Wednesday, Nov 15th, 2006 at 3:26 pm

Believe, and Be Happy: An Interview with John Ryan, George Dunford and Simon Sellars

by Andres Vaccari

Illustration by Mik Ruff, taken from Micronations: The Lonely Planet
Guide to Home-made Nations.
Welcome to Part Two of Sleepy Brain’s Micronational Bonanza, in which we continue to shine a spotlight on Lonely Planet’s new guide to Micronations: Home-made Nations. According to the book’s introduction, the guide is “a journey across the world and into […]

Wednesday, Oct 25th, 2006 at 9:40 pm

Micronations: An Introduction

In September 2006, Lonely Planet Publications launched its inaugural guide to Micronations (or ‘Home-Made Nations’). The project was the brainchild of John Ryan, and it was written by John, George Dunford and Simon Sellars. As promised, Sleepy Brain will be peddling a Micronational bonanza over the coming weeks, including extracts from the book, interviews with […]