Talleyrand was a tireless promoter of Brie, which he called the king of cheeses, supposedly at a dinner at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, when Europe was slicing up post-Napoleonic Europe. It was said that Brie was the only king to whom he always remained loyal.
M. Kurlansky, Milk: a 10,000 year history (2018), 278-9
Entirely new dishes were also created. In Argentina, dulce de leche, a thick dark caramel sauce made of sweetened condensed milk, became a national dish. There are numerous ways of cooking down condensed milk, but the popular technique is just to put the can in a pot of boiling water and leave it there for four to five hours. Simple, but there is a catch. If the water is allowed to boil away to the point where part of the can is exposed to air, it will explode.
M. Kurlansky, Milk: a 10,000 year history (2018), 193
Between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, the value of a Dutch cow quadrupled. The Dutch were starting to understand what best to feed cattle, as well as how best to cultivate pastureland. This led to an enormous increase in milk production in Friesland, Flanders, and Holland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Dutch cows were producing more than twice the yield of cows in neighbouring countries, and milk was more plentiful in the Netherlands than in most of Europe.
M. Kurlansky, Milk: a 10,000 year history (2018), 96
Martin Bryan and the Coggans went to the primary school because that was where children went to school. The Palings went there because Clare and Peter, who had opinions about education, and knew a thing or two, had observed that a state primary is as good as anything provided by the private sector and free into the bargain.
P. Lively, Judgement day, (1980), 24
A great deal of dotty folklore had accreted around these curious monarchs and their life-style. According to certain legends these people in their day wore priceless gems for breakfast and conducted their daily business of despotism from the back of elephants, in more-than-Oriental splendour. Another school of though, mainly their own, held that the Indian princes were far-sighted and benevolent rulers and their disappearance mournful. However that may have been (and it was both), one might have thought to have heard the last of the Maharajahs, but not so. Even in the tormented times that so threatened India today the princes stubbornly continued fighting on two fronts: against mythology on the one hand, and democracy on the other.
J. Cameron, An Indian summer (1974), 114
These Methodists preach Salvation through Faith in Christ without Repentance from Sin and I preach Repentance from Sin and then Salvation through Christ. No wonder that the first takes with disorderly people more than the last for if they may be saved without forsaking their Sins tis an easy thing to say they have Faith, but it is not an easy thing to forsake their Sins.
W. Holland, Paupers and pig killers: the diary of William Holland 1799-1818, ed. J. Ayres (1984), 270 [Sunday March 3, 1816]
What Forster had against colonialism (since he was a novelist and not a pamphleteer) was its corruption of individual relation, its destruction of personality. What irked Forster about the Raj was that it turned a silly Indian like Aziz into a martyr and a silly Englishman like Heaslop into a tyrant, and neither of them were fitted for roles so important.
J. Cameron, An Indian summer (1974), 110
I expect that is what irked Forster about colonialism, but it's not what I'd put top.
The Ways of Providence are very Mysterious. That this Man [Napoleon], an enemy to all Religion, an Assassin and Murderer and everything that is bad should succeed in all his Enterprises in this extraordinary manner is beyond Conception. Besides his success must have so evidently a bad influence on the Moral World as to induce many to distrust the Providence of God and make them think that it will be to no purpose to cultivate Moral Goodness and Uprightness of Conduct. However I pray to God that this Year may yet unfold some matters which tend to forbode the downfall of this Wicked Usurper.
W. Holland, Paupers and pig killers: the diary of William Holland 1799-1818, ed. J. Ayres (1984), 127 [Wednesday January 1, 1806]
They have in this county a funeral Sermon to every Corpse which I do not approve of much for it is bribing the Pulpit to give a good character to persons who may not deserve it. It is paying the Clergyman for supressing the notice of the bad qualities of the deceased and speaking only of the good. This is not properly holding him forth as an example to be followed, for his neighbours will recall what he really was and imagine they may go as they please and still get a good name at their death.
W. Holland, Paupers and pig killers: the diary of William Holland 1799-1818, ed. J. Ayres (1984), 90-91 [Monday October 3 1803]
In fact, the Tory party has, under Margaret, stopped being a party and become a movement, as dedicated to change as Labour itself once was. Manifestos have been written on tablets of stone. This sea change has put older Tories in some difficulty. We joined a party, not a movement, zeal was once left to our socialist opponents; today it is hard to find a Tory who is not a zealot.
J. Critchley, The Palace of Varieties (1989), 142
Mrs Thatcher is a self-acknowledged 'conviction politician'. Indeed, when challenged she has drawn the parallel of the Apostles themselves; 'Do you think you would ever have heard of Christianity if the Apostles had gone out and said "I believe in consensus"?' she asked an American journalist. It is this sense of conviction which explains much of her success, and tells one more about the sort of public figure she is. Conviction politics is all very well, but it does tend to mean a lac of respect for the convictions of others, and its practice can lead one swiftly into the paths of self-righteousness.
J. Critchley, The Palace of Varieties (1989), 121-2
