When I'm researching a book, I often discover facts that surprise me, and surprise many of my readers too. Sometimes these are curiosities; but sometimes they may change the way we look at history.

Over the years, I have accumulated quite a store of these. Each month a new fact will be posted on this website, and then added to this little archive into which you may care to delve from time to time.





Archive

July 2023 - James Bond movie names often contain jokes. Am I the only one to spot this in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME ? Anya, the Russian spy, is known as "Agent Triple X". The Russian letter written X is "Kha" which sounds more H than K. So Triple X in Russian would actually be "Ha Ha Ha" !

June 2023 - This June is the 300th birthday of the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith, member of the Scottish Enlightenment, friend of Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin, both of whom he met in Switzerland, author of ‘The Wealth of Nations’, and father of the market economy. Sadly, it seems that many leaders of today’s nations are not aware of his teachings.

May 2023 - MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY The international distress call since February 1923. Why not SOS? Because, though unmistakeable in Morse, SOS is not a clear audible signal. MAYDAY was chosen by the radio officer at England's Croydon Airport, where most flights went to Paris. It’s a rendering of “m'aidez” - “Help me” in French.

April 2023 - THE CURSE OF TUTANKHAMUN. Just a century ago, in April 1923, Lord Carnarvon, who'd financed the excavation of Tutankhamun's tomb, died from an infected mosquito bite. Thanks partly to lectures given by the (Sherlock Holmes) author Conan Doyle, people started saying that the Curse of the Pharaohs had killed Carnarvon for digging up an Egyptian royal tomb. Carnarvon was the owner of the castle we know from the TV series as 'Downton Abbey'. He financed the Egyptian excavations with the money his wife had inherited from her natural father, a Rothschild!!

March 2023 - The month of March heralds the spring. In Roman times the ten-month year began in March (the Ides of March was the last day for settling debts). Surprisingly, the New Year in Britain was reckoned from the 25th day of this month until as late as 1752.

February 2023 - Britain’s Coronations haven't always gone smoothly. When George IV was crowned in 1821, he gave orders that his estranged wife, Caroline, wasn’t to be allowed into Westminster Abbey at all! To the amusement of the crowds, she turned up, hammering on one closed door of the Abbey after another!

January 2023 - NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS It is said that the ancient Babylonians made New Year's Resolutions nearly 4,000 years ago - at the start of the spring crop-planting season. They used to promise the gods to pay their debts - and to return things they'd borrowed. We should all do the same, starting with borrowed books !!

December 2022 - On the first day of December 1955, exactly 67 years ago today, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus.

November 2022 - Readers of my novel LONDON may remember ‘The Suffragette’ chapter. But did you know that the first woman elected to the British Parliament - in 1919 - was an American? Nancy Langhorne of Virginia married Waldorf Astor, whose father had transplanted to Britain where he became a lord. Nancy, better known as Lady Astor, served in the British Parliament until 1945.

October 2022 - THE PUMPKIN: Native to Mexico and the United States, grown domestically for maybe 7,000 years, the English name may derive from French “pompon” or Massachussetts Native American “pohpukun”. US production is huge; Ukraine grows even more; but the greatest growing area today is Asia, where India and China together yield a dozen times the American crop.

September 2022 - It was in this month in the year 1609 that Henry Hudson, looking for a North West Passage to Asia, came to Manhattan and explored the river that was one day to bear his name. Two years later he entered what we now call Hudson Bay, above Canada, where his crew, fed up with his exploring, mutinied, put him and a few comrades in a small boat, and left them. He was never seen again.

August 2022 - WHEN THE SILENCE OF AN UNKNOWN PERSON CAN BECOME HISTORY: On the first day of August, 1944, Anne Frank wrote the last entry in her diary.

July 2022 - FIREWORKS: Were first used in China about twenty-two centuries ago as firecrackers - bamboo sticks thrown in a fire where they burst with a bang. In Europe, simple chemical fireworks go back maybe nine hundred years. And yes, there were fireworks on July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia! It’s recorded.

June 2022 - On June 13 2022 Queen Elizabeth II of England becomes the second-longest-reigning monarch known to history. In first place? Louis XIV of France. And he's less than two years ahead.

May 2022 - China: Land of historic ruling dynasties, and huge modern dams. The founding father of Chinese dynastic rule was the legendary king Yu the Great. Before even writing was practised, King Yu built vast irrigation systems to tame the waters of the mighty Yellow River. And he was not too proud to work with his hands beside his labourers. Ancient royal traditions, modern communist themes. Nothing changes.

April 2022 - The first Han Chinese fishermen joined the indigenous prehistoric people on the island in the 13th Century. In the mid 1500s, the Dutch arrived, called the place FORMOSA (Beautiful Island), and mostly controlled it until, in 1683, the new Manchu (Qing) dynasty of China took over. In 1895, the Japanese grabbed Taiwan and ruled it until 1945, when China’s Chiang Kai-shek got it back. After Mao took control of the mainland in 1949, Chiang’s regime and its successors have remained in what is now called the Republic of China on Taiwan, ever since.

March 2022 - We call it the mighty YANGTZE river. The Chinese don’t. Nowadays they call it the Cháng Jiāng, which means Long River. But historically, different sections along the river’s 3,900 miles have carried a bewildering number of names. So why do we call it the Yangtze? This was just the local name of an old ferry that Europeans came across in the coastal delta, and which they took to be the name of the entire, vast river system!

February 2022 - The author had always supposed that Bonsai tree cultivation originated in Japan. But no: The Japanese took the practice from China, about fourteen hundred years ago!

January 2022 - A NEW BROTHER FOR JESUS - The great Taiping Rebellion of the mid-nineteenth century that cost over a million lives was led by a man named Hong. After reading missionary tracts Hong had a vision and came to believe he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. He set up his own strange version of Christianity, called himself the Heavenly King and asked the British to help him overthrow the Chinese emperor.

December 2021 - THE GHOSTS OF THE FORBIDDEN CITY - The Forbidden City, the emperor's huge inner sanctum in the old city of Peking, as Beijing used to be called in the West, was said to contain many ghosts. The author of CHINA did not meet any ghosts when he visited the Forbidden City; but there is quite a friendly lady ghost in the novel!

November 2021 - FAME AFTER DEATH - As in many countries, a man in China who did great service to the state might be ennobled during his lifetime. But the Chinese went further. If the man’s reputation grew during the generations after his death, future emperors might raise his rank - not once, but several times. The dead hero might even finish up a duke !

October 2021 - BOXERS AND BULLETS - At the end of the nineteenth century, the Beijing region was troubled by the “Boxers” - nationalist fighters who wanted to kick out the westerners and kill the Christian converts. They practiced a form of mystical martial arts that they said protected them even from bullets - a claim that proved to be incorrect.

September 2021 - MISSIONARY SMUGGLERS - While China was still closed to foreigners, Protestant missionaries who wanted to get their translated Christian tracts into the hands of ordinary Chinese, were obliged to go out with the boats selling opium to local smugglers and pirates, and ask the smugglers to distribute the tracts onshore.

July 2021 - NO MAN CAN BE BLAMED FOR HIS ANCESTORS - Only a few Americans were prominent in the opium trade. The richest was a merchant named Delano. A part of his large fortune passed to his grandson, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

July 2021 - OPIUM AND SCOTLAND - Several of the greatest opium merchants were Scots. At least one had a degree from Edinburgh University. Their wealth from the opium trade allowed them to retire to estates in Galloway, south-west Scotland.

June 2021 - POLITICAL MORALITY  -  Many people in Britain disapproved of the opium trade.  None more so than the rising young politician and later prime minister William Gladstone, who made fiery speeches of moral outrage at this immoral drug trade - though he didn’t mention that his own family wealth had come from the slave trade!

May 2021 - XANADU - The real XANADU was a magnificent, thirteenth century hunting palace built by Kubla Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan and conqueror of China. It was situated up in Mongolia, far above the Great Wall of China. By Victorian times, the Manchu, another dynasty who conquered China from the north, had a similar hunting palace, but closer to the Wall.

April 2021 - Only one man was allowed to live in the royal palace of China, known as the Forbidden City: the emperor. All the other inhabitants were either women - wives, concubines or servants - or the famous palace eunuchs. Nearly all eunuchs were castrated when they were still only boys. But there were just a few who chose to be castrated after they became men, and even had children of their own. They did it for the money. 

March 2021 - The notorious opium trade of Victorian times, in which mostly British merchants, supported by gunboats, corrupted the health of the Chinese by selling them opium, was undertaken because the silver the merchants got in payment enabled them to buy the main thing they wanted from China: Tea, for which the British had developed an insatiable appetite, and which at that time came almost entirely from China.

February 2021 - For centuries, Chinese ladies had their feet bound from childhood, a process that involved breaking their toes and forcing their feet to grow into a shape like a little hoof, on which they would totter.  This was thought to be elegant and alluring.  Poor women who had to work in the fields usually did not have bound feet, nor did the ruling Manchu clans  -  though even the Manchu empress was proud that her feet were naturally tiny.

January 2021 - RHUBARB - During the three centuries before the nineteenth, China had become so cut off from Europe that senior mandarins were quite unsure where Britain was. They’d even been told that the western barbarians needed to import herbal rhubarb from China (a medicine), and that they would die if they couldn’t get it.

December 2020 - The great Yellow River - at the heart of Chinese civilization for over four thousand years - is so called because, on its journey from the Himalayas to the northern plain of China, it carves its way through a vast plateau of loess whose yellow dust it carried in the stream for hundreds of miles, giving the river its yellow appearance.

November 2020 - After World War I, a movement began to commemorate unknown fallen soldiers with a single tomb. On November 11, 1920, two years following the Armistice that ended the war, both France and the UK buried the remains of soldiers whose bodies couldn’t be identified. The British soldier was chosen from one of four who’d been exhumed from different battlefields in France, and transported back to England. This Unknown Warrior is to be found at Westminster Abbey in London. The French Unknown Soldier lies at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. In 1921, a similar monument was set up at the Arlington National Cemetery in the US. There are similar tombs in 58 countries at last count.

October 2020 - October, derived from the Latin Octo, which means eight, was actually the eighth month of the year in the original Roman calendar of ten months. It wasn’t until the Julian calendar was introduced by Julius Caesar in the first century BC that January and February were added. The Julian calendar remained the predominant calendar in Europe through the sixteenth century, until it was amended to the Gregorian calendar we still use today.

September 2020 - New York City’s Blackout of 1977. The first day in one of its longest and hottest heat waves on record brought about many of New York’s deep rooted issues – namely economic decline and growing crime – and plunged the city into darkness for 25 hours. Though the streets emptied of traffic, arson, looting and rampant crime threw the city into disarray. To this day, July 13, 1977 is remembered as one of the most infamous days in New York’s history.

August 2020 - The First Film. Though disputed by historians who claim that a functional Lumière camera did not exist before the end of 1894, the Lumière brothers, widely regarded as the inventors of cinema, claimed to have shot their first films in August, 1894. Seven months later, in March, 1895 in Paris, they presented what was probably the world’s first screening of a film in front of a large audience. Ironically, the main purpose of their presentation was to showcase exciting research on colour photography, but the brothers were surprised at how fixated the audience was with the moving black and white images also on display !

July 2020 - This month four hundred years ago, the famed Mayflower began its journey across the Atlantic. After abandoning its sister ship, the Speedwell, which was not seaworthy, the Mayflower finally set sail in September. The people on the Mayflower all belonged to an obscure sect called the Brownists. The founder, Brown himself, had already abandoned the sect and returned to the king’s Church of England. The Pilgrim fathers were woefully badly prepared for their journey, lacking proper farm implements and livestock. The miracle is that they survived at all!

June 2020 - Although many of his most memorable speeches and rallies occurred in the southern United States, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a huge presence in New York City during the 1950’s and 60’s – he gave many sermons at Riverside Church in Morningside Heights in Manhattan, led an anti-war march from Central Park to the United Nations, and received a Medallion of Honor from Mayor Robert Wagner. Across New York City, he has no less than eight major memorials dedicated to him, from streets to parks to playgrounds to housing and educational centers, and across the US in its entirety, there are approximately 900 streets in his name.

May 2020 - The first MGM Lion was Irish. The iconic MGM lion, which appears before every MGM film since the studio’s birth, has been a number of different lions since the early 20th century, but the very first MGM Lion was a Dubliner! Slats, born in the Dublin Zoo in 1919, was used on every black and white MGM film between 1924 and 1928. To this day, he is the only MGM lion not to roar, though reportedly he could growl on cue.

April 2020 - Hard to believe, but this month of April is the 50th anniversary of the 'official' break-up of the Beatles. This author was a very timid young student at Cambridge then. But the far more worldly and talented guy who had the room across the corridor from me had a lovely girlfriend who worked for John Lennon; and one day they scooped me up and took me to Lennon's house at Ascot. The white house with the white piano. Lennon himself wasn't there, but all the same . . . Fifty years later, that day is still so vivid

March 2020 - If the Black Death of the Middle Ages was the most famous, the last significant outbreak of the plague in Europe was three hundred years ago, in 1720, in the southern French port of Marseille, to which it had been brought on a ship from the Middle East. The passengers were isolated, but the city’s Deputy Mayor - who owned the ship! - insisted that its valuable cargo should be unloaded, with the result that the plague entered the city and killed some 100,000 people in the region.

February 2020 - Women's Suffrage in America : In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson had announced his support for a women's suffrage amendment, but progress was slow, and the amendment failed in the senate. To keep up pressure, a group of ladies known as the Silent Sentinels went on silent vigil outside the White House. Some of their banners were pretty strongly worded. But Wilson still asked them in for coffee. Not only did they refuse the invitation, but on February 9, 1919, they actually burned him in effigy in front of the White House! The amendment finally passed the senate in June and was ratified in August 1920.

January 2020 - Lost Island. About 1,000 feet south of the Rockaway shores, off the coast of Queens in New York City, a one mile long island which I make mention of in NEW YORK – called Hog Island - had by the late nineteenth century became a favourite getaway “back room business” gathering spot for some of the city’s most powerful Tamany Hall politicians, and even attracted beach resort businesses and developers. But following the infamous Hurricane of 1893, which made landfall in New York City in August of that year, the island all but disappeared under the sea, and was lost entirely by 1902. Almost a century later, following two particularly devastating storms, hundreds of artifacts from the late nineteenth century washed up on the shores of southern Long Island, believed to have come from Hog Island.

December 2019 - As those who have read PARIS will know, the Parisian neighborhood of Les Halles, now known for its vast mall complex, was once the site of the Cimetière des Innocents, Paris’ largest cemetery. What started in the 12th century as a smallish graveyard ballooned to a resting place for over 2 million corpses ! By the 1780’s, the cemetery had become so overfilled and unhygienic that Louis XVI closed it, and ordered all bodies be exhumed and transferred to the Catacombs. Today, only one relic remains from the neighborhood’s eerie past - La Fontaine des Innocents – a fountain built in the sixteenth century which once marked the entrance to the graveyard.

November 2019 - The first Armistice Day observances, which included a two minute silence, were held in London at Buckingham Palace on the eleventh day of November 1919, exactly a year after the last day of World War I. That same day, in America, President Woodrow Wilson signed a proclamation commemorating the day as Armistice Day. In Britain, Canada and many other places, this date is now called Remembrance Day; in the US Veterans Day.

October 2019 - Potatoes were made illegal in France for 24 years ! The French became convinced that the South American vegetable could cause a whole host of diseases, including leprosy, so in 1748, the cultivation and consumption of potatoes was strictly outlawed. It wasn’t until an imprisoned medical army officer named Antoine Auguste Parmentier survived in his prison cell subsisting solely on a diet of potatoes that acceptance of the food began to shift. After being released from prison, Parmentier went on to write a thesis about its health benefits, helping to overturn the law and re-introduce the potato to the French public in 1772. Within 20 years, potatoes became one of the most popular, and indeed, important foods in France. Even the ornamental royal gardens in Tuileres Palace in Paris - originally filled with flowers and exotic plants - were converted into potato fields.

September 2019 - Keeping Curry on Hand. Queen Victoria loathed spicy food, but as Empress of India, she insisted that curry be available at all times in the event that a “visiting oriental” ever showed up unannounced at the palace doors. The food itself, of course, was probably not something to be desired by any visitor. It consisted of previously cooked food doused in curry powder.

August 2019 - The first escalator England had ever seen was installed at Harrods in London on November 16th, 1898 to much fanfare, fascination and fear ! The moving staircase was such a strange and scary experience for people that Harrods began offering smelling salts and Cognac at the top in order to calm people after their terrifying ride.

July 2019 - In Manhattan in the early to mid nineteenth century, scores of pigs roamed the streets – about 20,000 of them at peak population in the early 1820’s, a ratio of roughly one pig to every five humans ! Many of them belonged to families. The city was quickly growing in the nineteenth century – in population and wealth disparity. Despite rapid urbanization, non-wealthy New Yorkers continued raising hogs as a means of surviving. A family could always slaughter one of its pigs to feed itself, or sell one of them since pork was a staple of the American diet. Why pigs? Other animals weren’t quite so compatible with urban life. People could let their pigs wander the streets, rummage through trash for the piles of spoiled food that was left out on the street during the day, and count on them to return home in the evening !

June 2019 - The award for shortest reign in history goes to…Louis-Antoine Duke of Angoulême of France ! Louis XIX ruled for approximately 20 minutes – the time between when his father Charles X of France signed abdication papers in 1830 and the moment he too wielded a quill, signing away his rights to the throne.

May 2019 - The Guillotine lives on! Within Paris’ 11th district, at the corner of the streets of La Croix-Faubin and Roquette, there are five concrete plates that pop out of the asphalt around them. Those five spots are what is left from the French guillotine. These marks of the former French judicial system have been kept and are still visible today.

April 2019 - For perhaps 600 years, the patron saint of England - not Britain - has been Saint George. Before St George, there were several candidates for the position, including the last king of the ancient Saxon royal house, St Edward the Confessor, son of the disastrous King Ethelred the Unready. But St Edward was a monkish fellow, always praying, and never popular. Whereas St George, by repute, had slain a dragon on top of a well-known beauty spot in southern England. The fact that he was most likely an obscure third-century Roman, who had never been to the British Isles in his life, and is unlikely to have met a dragon, could be forgotten. He was heroic, he had a fine silver shield with a bold red cross on it, like a crusader. And the Londoners liked him and made him their own. When this author was a Wolf Cub and a Boy Scout in his childhood, he always had to march in the big St George’s Day parade, on the twenty-third day of this month !

March 2019 - March is the month of the Spring Equinox when, in every country on Earth, the sun rises due East. Traditionally, most Christian churches are oriented on that due East line. But not all. Variations include churches that were oriented towards the sunrise as it would appear on the day of the year when they were founded, or on the saints day of the saint to whom the church was dedicated. You could test your local church with a compass.

February 2019 - Two of the greatest novels of the last sixty years - The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, and A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole - have the following in common: both manuscripts were persistently rejected by publishers, and both books were published after the death of the author.

January 2019 - It was only in January 2013, that the French Government ended the law that made it illegal for women to wear trousers. This absurd law had been put in place in 1800 after the French Revolution as a way of discouraging women from taking their liberty too seriously and demanding being allowed to perform “men’s” duties. Though not enforced, the law still stood for 213 years, before officially being revoked by Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, France's minister of women's rights.

December 2018 - In 1647, English Parliament, under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell and his fellow Puritans, banned Christmas festivities and the feast of Christmas, which they viewed as a sinful tradition. Though the ban lasted thirteen years until the restoration of the British monarch in 1660, the English people still celebrated Christmas and sang carols in private!

November 2018 - When the Great War in Europe ended this month, a hundred years ago, it left the continent scarred and shattered. One of the few things of beauty to arise from those terrible events was a piece of music written by Ravel for a concert pianist, (and brother of the great philosopher Wittgenstein), who had lost his right arm in the war. If you like Ravel’s Bolero - famous from ice dancers Torvill and Dean, and also the movie ’Ten’ - then try his piano Concerto for the Left Hand on youtube. I think you’ll love it.

October 2018 - Just over a decade before King Henry VIII of England broke with the Catholic Church in order to divorce his first wife Catherine of Aragon, he had been given the title “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X following the publication of the King’s book “Defense of the Seven Sacraments.” In the book, Henry defended the sanctity of marriage and the supremacy of the Pope.

September 2018 - The birth of sensationalist reporting. On September 3, 1833, The New York Sun newspaper was first printed, marking the beginning of the ‘penny press’ – inexpensive newspapers sold on sidewalks by newspaper boys. The paper focused on human interest stories and sensationalism and, remarkably, by 1836 was the largest seller in America with a circulation of 30,000 copies.

August 2018 - The school that claims to be the oldest in Britain is Kings School Canterbury, which was founded around the year 597 - yes, that’s over 1,400 years ago. But, along with other very ancient foundations, they can’t prove continuous operation. On the basis of unbroken teaching, I believe the best claim comes from the Cathedral School, Salisbury - place of my birth. It’s been going since the year 1091!

July 2018 - The First World War of 1914-18 (The Great War as it was known for a generation) brought about the collapse of the Russian Tsars, the Turkish Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburg family, and the German Imperial family. And with that collapse began the slow unravelling of certain kind of snobbery that is scarcely remembered by most people today. An example? Poor Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and his wife, whose joint assassination sparked off the war, were an ill-matched pair - meaning that though she came from a noble family, she was not royal. As a result, their children could never inherit the throne, and when their coffins were displayed in July 1918, her coffin was placed 18 inches lower than his, to make sure that snobbery was enshrined, even in tragic death.

June 2018 - Early in June 1937, in a chateau near Tours, the Duke of Windsor – formerly Edward VIII – married Wallis Simpson seven months after abdicating from the throne. None of his brothers attended the wedding.

May 2018 - John Milton, best known as the author of the interminable Paradise Lost, was also capable of writing short poems - one of the loveliest being, "Song on May Morning". Look it up!

April 2018 - Chaucer's cheerful prologue to his Canterbury Tales about April’s sweet showers was echoed grimly at the start of T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland : “April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land . . .”

March 2018 - The phrase "Mad as a March Hare" was popularized by Lewis Carrol in his classic, Alice in Wonderland, in which the March Hare is a character. The phrase was coined because hares are supposed to behave strangely during the March mating season.

February 2018 - The first leap year in the modern sense was in 1752 in Britain, with the adoption of the Gregorian calendar by Britain and her colonies. This was not the first time leap years had been used; the Julian calendar used before 1752 had a simpler system of leap years, and The Islamic calendar Al-Hijra also has an extra day added to the 12th month Zul Hijja on leap years.

January 2018 - In 1890, nine-year-old Daisy Ashford wrote a novel and never showed it to the world. It was only after her mother’s death some twenty-eight years later, when she was sorting through old papers with her sisters, that she found the manuscript in a drawer. After the manuscript found its way to publishers, the book – The Young Visiters – came out in 1919, (yes, that is how the title was spelled) to great acclaim. After the book went into several editions, Daisy bought a farm with her earnings, commenting, “I like fresh air and royalty cheques”.

December 2017 - Before the calendar adjustment of 1752, the shortest day of the year fell on Saint Lucy's Day (the 13th day of December). And it's celebrated by one of the best poems John Donne ever wrote, A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day.

November 2017 - On November 10, 1871 Welsh-born journalist Henry Morton Stanley found his quarry, the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone, in present-day Tanzania. However, he did not say “Dr Livingstone, I presume?”, as legend has it. The famous quote was in fact coined the following year by a newspaper editor.

October 2017 - Until World War II, France was on the same time zone as London. After occupying the country in 1940, Germany forced France to conform with Berlin time, and this change has never been canceled.

September 2017 - Despite the terrible nature of and damage caused by the 1666 Great Fire of London, only 8 people were killed. This is despite the fire destroying at least 13,500 houses.

August 2017 - The first motorist to be fined for speeding in the UK was Walter Arnold in 1896. He was driving 8 miles per hour. At the time the speed limit for motor vehicles was 2 miles per hour!

July 2017 - Henry III kept a polar bear in the Tower of London. It swam in the Thames.

June 2017 - Shakespeare, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Charles I all had pierced ears.

May 2017 - In 1811, nearly a quarter of all women in Britain were called Mary!

April 2017 - In the United States, the current 50-star flag was designed by then 17 year old Robert G. Heft as part of a school project. For his effort, he received a grade of B-. When his design was chosen and adopted by presidential proclamation, his teacher changed his grade to an A!

March 2017 - In 1598, Queen Elizabeth ordered a banquet featuring a food source from the new world: potatoes. The royal cooks, having never prepared potatoes before, threw the veggie away and cooked the green part or eye instead, sickening the whole royal court. Elizabeth banned the vegetable. The ban was eventually lifted a few years later when potatoes gained popularity in Spain, France and Italy.

February 2017 - All British Centurion tanks since 1945 have been equipped with tea making facilities.

January 2017 - In one day of heavy fighting during the Battle of Stalingrad, a local railway station changed hands from Soviet to German control and back again fourteen times in six hours.

December 2016 - Hitler gave orders to destroy Paris on the eve of the allied liberation in 1944, but the Nazi General in control of Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, intentionally ignored the order. In his 1951 memoir, Choltitz claimed that he defied the order because of his love for the city and because he realized by then that Hitler had gone insane. Choltitz has since been described by many as the “Saviour of Paris.”

November 2016 - Only one British Prime Minister out of fifty-one who have held the office since 1751, has ever been assassinated - Spencer Perceval was shot at the House of Commons in 1812. In comparison, four sitting US presidents have been assassinated since Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. The last, of course, was JFK in November, 1963.

October 2016 - The Norman invasion of Britain in October, 1066 began with the Battle of Hastings which, despite its name, actually occurred 6.5 miles northwest of Hastings near the present day town of Battle. The first man recorded to be killed in the battle was William the Conqueror’s jester, Taillefer, who initiated the battle by taunting the English and juggling his sword! One vulgar joke too many!

September 2016 - “New York was the Big Orange before it became the Big Apple.” In 1673, the Dutch regained control of New York and renamed the city New Orange to honor the Prince of Orange, William III. The city maintained the name for just over a year, until it was permanently ceded to the British under the Treaty of Westminster.

August 2016 - One of Sir Christopher Wren’s first design proposals for St. Paul’s cathedral apparently featured a stone pineapple at the top of the dome. There are pineapples on top of the two western towers. He saw them as “a symbol of peace, prosperity and hospitality.”

July 2016 - The French National Anthem – La Marseillaise – was originally called the Song of The Army of The Rhine and was not written in Marseille. The writer, Rouget-de-L’Isle was himself a royalist and refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new republican constitution. He was imprisoned and barely escaped the guillotine before being released in 1794 during the Thermidorian Reaction.

June 2016 - A new French Underground Resistance. There is a group in Paris called "Les UX" that spends most of its time saving parts of the city that the government has failed to look after. Its members frequently use the huge maze of secret tunnels under the old city, breaking into historical sites and monuments to repair them. It also holds cultural events - art and movie shows for instance - in the underground passages. Its membership is a closely guarded secret, but is rumoured to include senior figures in the French establishment!

May 2016 - The Manhattan grid pattern produces an effect known as the Manhattan solstice or “Manhattanhenge”. Twice a year – around May 28th and July 12th – the sunset is directly aligned with the street grid pattern. The dates on which sunrise aligns with the streets on the Manhattan grid are evenly spaced around the winter solstice, and correspond approximately to December 5 and January 8.

April 2016 - William the Conqueror’s half-brother and trusted companion Odo, became Bishop of Bayeux. Odo amassed a huge fortune through extortion and robbery. He was also a notable warrior, and he probably commissioned the famous Bayeux Tapestry where he is shown encouraging his brother's troops with a battle club. On separate occasions Odo was found guilty of defrauding the crown and planning a military expedition in Italy for unknown reasons - possibly to make himself Pope. He spent five years in prison for his transgressions, but he still remained a bishop!

March 2016 - In respectable Victorian Britain, it’s reported, the deeply moralistic Prime Minister Gladstone once confessed: "I've known eleven prime ministers and ten were adulterers.” Actually, some reports say he said they all were, and some say it was only seven.

February 2016 - In 1921, the top of Salisbury Cathedral’s soaring spire supported not a cross, but a weather vane. One can also see it in Constable’s famous paintings of the cathedral. These church weather vanes were quite common. My favourite one is further down the River Avon, on the tower of Christchurch Priory – a splendid golden salmon.

January 2016 - Good year - bad year - good year! Having received a Pulitzer Prize for THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA in 1953, Hemingway gave his wife Mary an African holiday as a Christmas present. In January 1954, their chartered flight over the Belgian Congo crashed in heavy brush. The novelist had a head wound, Mary two broken ribs. So they took a plane to the nearest hospital, and that exploded on take-off. This time Hemingway was badly hurt. Newspapers all over the world reported him missing, then dead. It took months to stop the obituaries. In October 1954, he was awarded his Nobel Prize.

December 2015 - After George Washington died in December 1799, then First Consul Napoleon ordered 10 days of mourning in France.

November 2015 - Madison Square Park, Washington Square Park, Union Square Park and Bryant Park were all at one time cemeteries, and there may still be thousands of bodies below Washington Square.

October 2015 - Though the origin of New York State’s nickname, The Empire State, is still unknown, the commonly accepted tale is that when George Washington was given a map of the city prior to the Battle of New York, he remarked that its natural geographic advantages made it fit to be the "Seat of an Empire.” My own view, spoken by one of my characters in the novel, is that if George III had been wiser, New York might be the seat of a British Empire now!

September 2015 - Pearl street in Manhattan, named after the plethora of oyster shells left beside the East River by native Americans before the Dutch settlement, was originally the eastern shoreline of lower Manhattan. It was only after the use of extensive landfill over several centuries that the shoreline was extended another 700-900 feet. In the mid-1650s a three-story tavern near what is now 73 Pearl Street became the city's first City Hall.

August 2015 - At the time it was built in 1909, many people thought New York’s famous Flatiron Building’s height and unique triangular shape would not withstand strong winds and that it would topple over. The building was given another nickname by many: “Burnham’s Folly”, referring to its architect, Daniel Burnham.

July 2015 - Anyone for cricket? In 1776, the Sons of Liberty famously pulled down the statue of King George III on New York’s Bowling Green. But when the British Army occupied New York soon afterwards, Bowling Green was used as a cricket pitch. I should like the young people of nearby Wall street to start playing cricket again on Bowling Green - just to make sure they don’t forget the good old rules of English fair play!

June 2015 - Unintended Consequences : When the Pope was asked by England's King Henry VIII to annul his marriage, so that Henry could try to provide his country with a legitimate male heir, he might well have obliged. But he was prevented by the Holy Roman Emperor, the Hapsburg Charles V, who wasn't going to have his aunt (Henry's wife) cast off like that. How horrified the pious Charles V would have been if he'd known that his family loyalty would lead to England becoming Protestant!

May 2015 - There is a watermill in the novel SARUM that was used in the process of fulling cloth. It was modelled on a real watermill dating back to 1250 that still exists to this day : The Old Mill at Harnham is a delightful pub and restaurant just outside Salisbury, where the author has been going all his life. Warmly recommended.

April 2015 - Glorious Bastard : William the Conqueror was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy by the daughter of a tanner in the Norman town of Falaise. The tanning of leather was renowned for being a smelly business. One year, when William besieged Falaise, the citizens taunted him by hanging leather skins from the walls. Bad move. He killed them all. The author is proud to be one of the millions of descendants of William - and of the tanner, of course!

March 2015 - Mighty London : After winning the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the Conqueror came to the walls of London. But he didn't conquer the city. He had to negotiate with the aldermen and grant all their ancient privileges before they would let him in.

February 2015 - Today's Savoy Hotel in London stands on the site of John of Gaunt's great medieval palace, where Chaucer - author of THE CANTERBURY TALES - was a frequent visitor. Impresario D'Oyly Carte built the hotel using the huge profits from Gilbert and Sullivan's MIKADO. I think Chaucer would have approved.

January 2015 - The new Empire State Building helped produce a 92% increase in available New York office space just as the Depression was beginning. Tenants were hard to find. For many years it was known as the Empty State Building.

December 2014 - Christmas Marriage? Traditionally, the best time to marry was between Harvest and Christmas, when there was usually more food in the countryside. You'll find references to Christmas marriages in eighteenth century novels. June weddings are quite a new idea.

November 2014 - Notre Dame Cathedral: The lovely cathedral we know today is only there because in the Middle Ages an ambitious bishop named Maurice de Sully assured the Pope that the then old-fashioned cathedral on the site was too small to hold all the faithful. He then built a fashionable new cathedral - of exactly the same size !

October 2014 - Bois de Boulogne: The huge park that borders the western side of Paris was built on the orders of Emperor Napoleon III because he knew London well and wanted something to rival Hyde Park.

September 2014 - The hill of Montmartre has been riddled with mining tunnels since Roman times. The mines yielded gypsum, from which a wonderful white plaster was made - hence the term 'Plaster of Paris'.

August 2014 - The big open space in front of Notre Dame was only cleared in the nineteenth century. Until then it was covered by some of the worst slums in Paris.

July 2014 - It's often thought that in 1940, the French just let Hitler enter France without putting up much of a fight. Not true. They suffered over 200,000 killed or wounded in the brief but very bloody campaign.

June 2014 - When King Francis of France - patron and friend of Leonardo da Vinci, who died in his arms - was challenged to a wrestling match by England's Henry VIII, the French king won. Henry VIII was not pleased !

May 2014 - Safe Sex. At the start of the nineteenth century, Napoleon regulated the Paris brothels, which had to be licensed and have frequent medical inspections. This lasted until after World War II.

April 2014 - Hope for Novelists ! The great Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables, had an important avenue named after him in his own lifetime. His address was: The House of Monsieur Hugo, In his Avenue. When he died in 1885, he was given a state funeral.

March 2014 - The atheist French Revolutionaries turned Notre Dame cathedral into a Temple of Reason. It stayed that way for several years.

February 2014 - Once, in the nineteenth century, the emperors of Russia and Germany , together with the Kaiser's son and Bismarck, had a famous lunch at the Cafe Anglais in Paris. There were 16 courses, and they ate for over eight hours. Cost in today's money: over $10,000, or 6,000 pounds sterling a head. The menu has been preserved.

January 2014 - After the Germans overran France and Hitler came to Paris in 1940, he couldn't go up the Eiffel Tower. Some patriotic resisters had cut the elevator cables, so that he'd either have to climb the stairs or go away. He went away.

December 2013 - Nine centuries ago, Eloise was probably the best educated young lady in Paris - she could read latin, Greek and Hebrew - but when she had an affair with her tutor, the famous churchman and philosopher Abelard, her uncle had Abelard castrated. Not before she was pregnant though. She called her son Astrolabe - the name of an astronomical instrument. Poor little fellow !

November 2013 - The well-known school, the Lycee Janson de Sailly, owes its existence to the wife of an elderly lawyer of that name, who took a lover. To punish her, the lawyer used every penny he had to found the school - and left his widow nothing.

October 2013 - The famous Madeleine church in the middle of Paris was originally a Jewish synagogue, until the French king expelled the Jews just after 1180.

September 2013 - The estate of the Knights Templar outside the old walls of Paris was tax exempt. For centuries after the Templars' fall, this area remained a tax haven for all its residents.

August 2013 - When Buffalo Bill's circus came to Paris in 1889, the first performance wasn't going too well, until Annie Oakley came on. Her shooting so astounded the audience, that the whole show became an instant hit.

July 2013 - Eiffel the Entrepreneur: When the French authorities decided to build the Eiffel Tower for the 1889 World's Fair, they wouldn't put up the money. So Eiffel agreed to finance it himself, if they gave him the receipts from the visitors for twenty years. As a result, he made a fortune.

June 2013 - The dreaded guillotine had actually been designed by Doctor Guillotin to ensure that executions were clean and painless. Some revolutionaries protested against using the guillotine for the aristocrats and enemies of the Revolution, because they didn't suffer enough.

May 2013 - Amazingly, in World War I, preparations were well under way before the war ended to build a fake model Paris, mostly of wood and canvas, just a few miles outside the real city, to deceive the German Gotha bombers if they made night raids.

April 2013 - Who was the father of Louis XIV of France ? It may have been his official father Louis XIII. But it may also have been his mother's close friend, Cardinal Mazarin, who himself may have been partly Jewish. It is said that the Sun King himself suspected his biological father was Mazarin.

March 2013 - In August 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre. The police wrongly arrested several people on suspicion, including the young - Pablo Picasso !

February 2013 - The famous Bastille fortress in Paris was originally built to defend the Parisians against the marauding English.

January 2013 - New York's Statue of Liberty was built at 25 rue de Chazelles, in Paris. The inner framework was designed by Gustave Eiffel, just before he built his famous Tower.

December 2012 - In 1914, when the French needed to rush reinforcements from Paris to the front in a single day, the men were taken in 600 commandeered Paris taxis !

November 2012 - In the middle of the building of the Eiffel Tower, the men went on strike. Eiffel gave them a raise. He had no choice. He was running out of time.

October 2012 - In medieval Paris, like most medieval cities, the bridges across the river were covered with either houses or water mills. But the famous Pont Neuf of King Henry IV at the start of the seventeenth century was the first bridge without houses. The king wanted people to enjoy the fine views.

September 2012 - The story goes - it's probably an exaggerration of some window-dressing to impress foreign ambassadors - that when Catherine the Great of Russia took a river tour of the recently annexed Crimea in 1787, her lover and maybe secret husband Potemkin (it's pronounced Potyomkin) erected fake villages on the river banks each day to make the place look better than it was. Hence the expression : 'a Potemkin village.'

August 2012 - In Old Russia, all the senior state offices and army commands were taken by the great boyar families, who would even get into fights over whose family was older in determining their pecking order. One boyar might refuse to serve under another in battle if he thought his own family was senior - irrespective of military experience or competence. This was the world of the boyars that Peter the Great finally destroyed at the start of the eighteenth century.

July 2012 - Lenin, though a revolutionary, was technically a nobleman himself, and his fiery speeches were delivered in surprisingly aristocratic accents.

June 2012 - St Petersburg is a lovely city. But Peter the Great built it in a hurry with a huge labour force that was short of supplies, food, and shelter from the harsh winter climate. Probably over a hundred thousand workmen died.

May 2012 - We think of heraldic coats of arms as shields carried by knights in armour - and so they were. But even in the Middle Ages, London merchants could get them. Shakespeare, a humble actor, was granted a coat of arms four centuries ago.

April 2012 - When the Mongol hordes swept out of Asia in the Middle Ages and subjugated old Russia, they mostly mounted their campagns in the winter. The reason? They could handle the cold, and the rivers were frozen, making movement much easier.

March 2012 - The oysters grown in the estuary of London's River Thames were so prized that in Roman times they were shipped all the way to the imperial city itself. By the eighteenth century, oysters were the food of the poor.

February 2012 - In SARUM, many readers have noticed that during Nelson's great naval victory of Trafalgar, in 1805, a ship named the Swiftsure was commanded by William Rutherfurd. This was in fact an ancestor of the author, and there is an account of the building of the ship in THE FOREST.

January 2012 - In 1588, when the huge Spanish Armada was sent by the Catholic King of Spain to conquer Protestant England, the councillors of Queen Elizabeth I were afraid that the English Catholics in the countryside might rise to support them.

December 2011 - In LONDON, there is a story of a brave apprentice who jumped into the River Thames to save his master's daughter from drowning, and then married her. This is based on a true story that the author found in the records of the Watermen's Company. The real apprentice's family name was Osborne. Not only did he become a great man in the city of London, but his descendants rose to become Dukes of Leeds.

November 2011 - In the seventeenth century, it was still not understood that bubonic plague was transmitted by fleas on rats. People thought that dogs and cats probably carried it. So in the Great Plague of London in 1665, orders were given to kill household pets. Daniel Defoe (author of Robinson Crusoe) estimated that 40,000 dogs and 200,000 cats were killed in London at this time.

October 2011 - Traditionally, English theatre companies go on tours of the provinces in the summer months. This dates back to the days of Shakespeare when the players, like the nobility, left London in the summer months when outbreaks of the plague often occured in the city.

September 2011 - Saint Kevin's retreat, the monastery of Glendalough in the Wicklow Mountains is one of the loveliest places in Ireland. But in the eighteenth century, some pretty wild parties took place up there. A later, highly respectable frequenter of Glendalough was Sir William Wilde, father of Oscar.

August 2011 - The lovely Wicklow Mountains overlook Dublin. Yet despite Wicklow's proximity to the English capital of the medieval island, it was mostly still 'beyond the Pale' and remained one of the last parts of Ireland to come under English control. Though welcoming tourists, Wicklow is somewhat a world apart, even today.

July 2011 - In the year 597, when the Pope sent Saint Augustine to convert the Saxons of England to Christianity, the saint was told to make for London because, using maps from the days of the Roman Empire, the Vatican thought 'Londinium' was the island's capital. In fact, London was then a deserted ruin. But there was a friendly king down in Canterbury, which is why England's primate is Archbishop of Canterbury to this day.

June 2011 - If you are ever in Salisbury Cathedral and know the story of Osmund Mason from Sarum, then go to the South Transept and through the door into the cloisters. As you do so, on the wall you'll see a memorial tablet to William Osmund, Mason of the cathedral, who died in 1875. This suggested the fictional character's name to the author.

May 2011 - In the great build up of Allied forces before D-Day in 1944, the huge spaces of Salisbury Plain just above Sarum were covered with military vehicles of every kind. Their camouflage was greatly aided by the huge ancient hedgerows that, in those days, still lay between the fields, under which a vehicle might completely disappear.

April 2011 - If you visit Sarum on a Tuesday or Saturday, you will find traders selling all kinds of goods in Salisbury's big medieval market place, where Market Days have been pretty much unchanged for eight centuries. Glance across at the west side of the Guildhall and you will see a street sign recently put up to celebrate a local author : Rutherfurd Walk !

March 2011 - The traditional Anglo-Saxon lawcourt had no advocates, no jury and heard no evidence. The case was decided by the number and status of the people who swore that one or the other party was in the right.

February 2011 - Around Sarum, it has been known for lightning to strike the ground and leave a scorch mark in a dead straight line across open ground - because it has earthed itself along the metalled surface of a buried Roman road.

January 2011 - During World War II, the five rivers that meet at Sarum were used as a natural signpost by the German Luftwaffe on their bombing raids into central England.

December 2010 - In 1915, Stonehenge was sold at auction. It was bought by a local gentleman, Mr Cecil Chubb. In 1918 he gave it to the nation.

November 2010 - For the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, a huge glass palace - the Crystal Palace - was built. Two years later, New York held its own exhibition, also with a Crystal Palace, just behind the huge, Egyptian revival Distribution Reservoir of the Croton Aqueduct water system, on Fifth Avenue - which would later be replaced by today's New York Public Library.

October 2010 - In the financial Panic of 1907, Wall Street was saved by the intervention of the legendary Pierpont Morgan. Credit was restored with a pledge from the US Treasury of the then huge sum of $30 million to Morgan, to use as he thought fit. Does this sound familiar?

September 2010 - Focus was a 1945 novel, set in Brooklyn, about American Anti-Semitism, and written by Arthur Miller. In 2001 it was made into a brilliant but disturbing movie, co-produced by today's Mayor Bloomberg. Nine years later, I was delighted to see, according to a recent filing, that the mayor had finally got some profit from his worthy investment.

August 2010 - The Empire State Building stands on the site of the house of the legendary arbiter of New York high society, 'The' Mrs Astor. After a family row, her nephew Waldorf left for England, where he bought a castle and became Lord Astor. And in revenge against his aunt, he tore down his father's house, which was next door to hers, and built a huge hotel there, called the Waldorf. After a while, her privacy destroyed, Mrs Astor moved out, and the Astoria hotel was built on the site of her house. Both were knocked down to make way for the Empire State Building. Today's Waldorf Astoria Hotel stands on Park Avenue.

July 2010 - During the construction of the Empire State Building, there were workers of many races working on the huge site, including teams of Mohawk Indian ironworkers. Everyone went to the canteen provided, except the Italians, who always brought their own pack lunches, knowing that only Italian food was good to eat!

June 2010 - Though the Crash of 1929 wiped out many people, the market actually recovered somewhat, early in 1930. The greatest damage was done by the terrible, slow slide that followed, until the final bottom in July 1932.

May 2010 - On Wednesday October 23, 1929, in a daring move, the great spire of the lovely Art Deco Chrysler Building was suddenly hoisted into place, taking its competitors by surprise and making it, for a brief time, the tallest building in the world. Ironically, the very next day was Black Thursday, the start of the great Crash of '29.

April 2010 - Perhaps the most famous Jazz club during Prohibition was the Cotton Club in Harlem, acquired and run by gangster Owney Madden while he was still in prison in Sing Sing. Though of Irish ancestry, Madden was born British, in Leeds, proudly spoke broad Yorkshire, [US : spoke with a broad Yorkshire accent] and regularly read the Yorkshire Post until he died.

March 2010 - Italian immigrants crossing the Atlantic to Ellis Island believed that the German liners that called at Italy's southern ports, had better conditions. Many Italian immigrants only came to work temporarily, and sometimes there would be more Italians returning to Italy than arriving.

February 2010 - Rolls Royce cars were so fashionable in America that by 1921 Rolls Royce had a factory in Springfield, Massachusetts, and in 1925, a further bodywork plant in Long Island City.

January 2010 - The Dakota building where John Lennon was tragically killed, is generally believed to be so-called because when it was completed in 1884, it was as remote from the fashionable addresses 'as Dakota'. An urban myth. Its builder, Edward Clark, loved all things Indian, and had already built another apartment house called the Wyoming.

December 2009 - Madame Restell - who was actually English, born Ann Trow in Gloucestershire - was notorious as an 'abortionist' in mid-nineteenth century New York because she sold birth control products. She made a fortune, and build a magnificent mansion on Fifth Avenue - right beside the new Roman Catholic St Patrick's Cathedral!

November 2009 - The idea of the Civil War was unpopular with New York, whose business was closely linked with the cotton plantations of the South. In 1861, just before the Civil War began, Mayor Fernando Wood proposed that New York should secede from the Union and set up as a sovereign city-state.

October 2009 - Lord North, the British Prime Minister during the American War of Independence, was probably the illegitimate half brother of King George III, whom he closely ressembled. The two brothers commanding the British forces sent to America, General Howe and Admiral Howe, were acknowledged by the king to be his illegitimate cousins!

September 2009 - Ben Franklin, who'd been living in London almost twenty years, ardently believed in the British Empire, supported King George III, and tried to avert the crisis with the American colonies almost until the Revolution began. His son, the loyalist Governor of New Jersey, remained on the British side.

August 2009 - Lord Cornbury, the British Governor of New York in the early years of the eighteenth century was accused of being what we nowadays call a cross-dresser. He was also the queen's cousin.

July 2009 - In England's Civil War, when Charles I and his Royalists fought agains Cromwell and Parliament, the farmers around the Sarum area became so sick of the rival armies that they formed their own force, the Clubmen, who would beat up soldiers from either side who gave them any trouble.

June 2009 - The world-famous tower and spire of Salisbury Cathedral have been standing for more than seven hundred years. But their weight is so great that the soaring stone pillars beneath have bent under the strain, as any visitor standing in the nave can plainly see. So say a prayer as you walk underneath!

May 2009 - The huge chalk downs that stretch from Dover in the east right across southern England to Stonehenge and beyond, are formed of marine deposits, from the time when all this land lay under the sea.

April 2009 - There used to be a three great oak trees in England's New Forest which would suddenly break into green leaf at Christmas each year. This may have been caused by lightning strikes resetting the trees' internal 'clocks', or by a genetic peculiarity. Nobody knows. But the 'miraculous oaks' certainly existed in Shakespeare's time, and probably long after.

March 2009 - The Rufus Stone in England's New Forest, visited by large numbers of tourists every year, marks the place where King William II was famously killed by an arrow, possibly shot by Walter Tyrrel, while hunting in the forest in the year 1099. But it's in the wrong place. The correct site, it's believed, is near Beaulieu Abbey, where a new memorial was set up by Lord Montagu and Edward Rutherfurd in 2001.

February 2009 - Jane Austen's highly respectable aunt was arrested for theft in fashionable Bath and kept in the common criminals' jail for weeks. Her loyal husband went to jail too, to keep her company.

January 2009 - The word 'Forest' in England's medieval forests, like the famous New Forest, does not refer to trees. In the legal latin of the middle ages, it meant a reservation, set aside for the king's hunting.

December 2008 - The markings on the hindquarters of a fallow deer are individual to each one, like a fingerprint. Whether the deer can identify them, we do not know!

November 2008 - In the great financial panic of 1825, London was also under a thick 'pea-souper' fog. Many customers, trying to withdraw their funds, were unable to do so because they couldn't find their banks in the fog!

October 2008 - The traditional wedding cake, with its many tiers, was invented in eighteenth century London. It was copied from the tower of St Bride's church, designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

September 2008 - While Sir Christopher Wren was building London's St Pauls cathedral, he concealed the fact that it was to have the dome for which it is famous. The London Protestants had objected to the fact that it looked like the Pope's great church of St Peters in Rome. Fortunately, Wren outlived the objectors, and the great dome was built.

August 2008 - Shakespeare's Globe theatre originally stood north of the river Thames. But because of a legal dispute, it was dismantled, taken across the Thames, and erected on the south bank.

July 2008 - Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of The Canterbury Tales, is buried in Westminster Abbey - not because he was a great author, but because his house belonged to the abbey. Chaucer was a figure at the royal court. His sister-in-law was the mistress and later wife of John of Gaunt, the king's brother.

June 2008 - In medieval London, most of the brothels were owned by the Bishop of Winchester. The regulations for the brothels may well have been drawn up by the future saint, Thomas Becket.

May 2008 - The great Tower of London was actually one of a pair of towers. The other, nearly identical, tower was built in the ancient east coast town of Colchester.

April 2008 - London once had a Roman arena, like the Colosseum, but nobody knew where it was. Recently, archeologists have discovered that London's central Guildhall is sitting in the middle of it.

March 2008 - The River Thames did not originally flow through London, but further to the north. The course of the river was shifted south by the ice cap during the last Ice Age.

February 2008 - Not only is there a big Norse mixture in all Irish ancestry, but every one of Ireland's coastal cities were founded by the Vikings.

January 2008 - Fashionable St Stephens Green in the heart of Dublin is named after a small hospital that used to be there - for lepers.

December 2007 - There were quite a lot of British in early Ireland. The Irish kept them as slaves.

November 2007 - Saint Patrick was not the first Christian missionary in Ireland.Ireland's lack of snakes had nothing to do with the saint.At the end of the last Ice Age, the arctic waters cut Ireland off from Britain before the snakes could get across.

October 2007 - Until the seventeenth century, Irish women had more freedom and more rights than English women. A man wanting to obtain the coveted freedom of Dublin could get it by marrying a woman who had it in her own right.

September 2007 - Divorce was common in early Ireland, right through the Christian Middle Ages. Married priests and abbots were also common in those days.

August 2007 - The Famine was undoubtedly made into a catastrophe by the British government. But the cause of their neglect was largely an economic, free-market dogma, misapplied in Irish conditions. The tragedy was chiefly the result of ignorance and stupidity rather than deliberate malice.

July 2007 - Daniel O'Connell, the Catholic Liberator, was a Deist (pretty much an agnostic in today's terms) and a Freemason as a young man. His family fortune came from smuggling.

June 2007 - The famous Hedge Schools of Catholic Ireland are much admired. But the schoolmasters who were most greatly prized were the mathematicians. By the end of the eighteenth century, many Irish insisted that their children be taught in English, because they thought it more useful.

May 2007 - Today the Presbyterians of Protestant Ulster are known for their determination to remain part of Britain. But originally, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, they were persecuted for their religion, and allied with the Catholics against England.

April 2007 - Most people have heard of the Year of the French, the rebellion of 1798 inspired by the French Revolution. But Rutherfurd shows how the great Patriot movement and the Parliament of Grattan which preceded it grew directly out of the American Declaration of Independence and War of Independence.

March 2007 - Jonathan Swift's great book, Gulliver's Travels, contains some very curious names. Some of these are in fact jokes in the Irish language, which Swift could speak.

February 2007 - At the famous Battle of the Boyne, when Protestant King William defeated Catholic King James, there were large numbers of Protestant mercenaries on the Catholic side and the Pope in fact supported Protestant King William!!

January 2007 - Cromwell had to send many of his troops home before embarking for Ireland because they refused to fight a war that would deny Catholics the right to practice their religion. These English troops thought all men should be free to worship as they pleased.

December 2006 - Cromwell's army came in part to avenge the Irish massacre of Protestants of 1641. They were told that the Irish had killed 300,000 Protestants. The true figure - both sides actually killed each other - was probably under 5,000. This outrageous piece of anti-Irish propaganda was repeated and believed for another two and a half centuries.


More Books
CLICK A COVER TO READ MORE & PURCHASE


Welcome
Please choose your regional preference: