and Underhill's winding streets. A. E. Housman wrote of the place in his poem, "The Isle of Portland", from A Shropshire Lad. Hilaire Belloc's book The Cruise of the "Nona" is about sailing near Portland, and the reflections it occasions. He describes Portland Race as "the master terror of our world", and says "... if you were to make a list of all the things which Portland Race has swallowed up, it would rival Orcus". In Museums Without Walls, Jonathan Meades declares that "Portland is a bulky chunk of geological, social, topographical and demographic weirdness. It is the obverse of a beauty spot. 'Beauty' in this construction implies the picturesque. Portland is gloriously bereft of this quality. It is awesome. There is nothing pretty about it." In The Warlord Chronicles (1995–97), Bernard Cornwell makes Portland the Isle of the Dead, a place of internal exile, where the causeway was guarded to keep the 'dead' (people suffering insanity) from crossing the Fleet and returning to the mainland. No historical evidence exists to support this idea. The Portland Chronicles series of four children's books, set on and around Portland and Weymouth and written by local author Carol Hunt, draw on local history to explore a seventeenth century world of smuggling, witchcraft, piracy and local intrigue. In the Louis L'Amour novel To the Far Blue Mountains the novel's main character, Barnabas Sackett, hides in Cave Hole at the Bill of Portland before meeting a sailing ship in an attempt to escape from England. Pink Pippos of Portland, a children's storybook about nearby Chesil Beach was written by Portland author Sandra Fretwell. Vernacular Bunnies: (see above). Kimberlin: slang for any 'strangers' who live on the island but are not from the island. Portland screw: fossil mollusc (Aptyxiella portlandica) with a long screw-like shell or its cast. Notable people Lead singer of rock band Art Brut, Eddie Argos Edgar F. Codd (23 August 1923 – 18 April 2003), British computer scientist and inventor of the relational model for database management Former Premier League referee Paul Durkin Former Queensland, Australia, politician Pat Comben See also References Informational notes The figures for non-census years are estimates. Plants in the Royal Horticultural Society's hardiness rating H2 are tolerant of temperatures as low as but will not survive being frozen. The maximum hours of sunshine possible in one year is approximately 4383 hours (12 hours/day × 365.25 days). The