her attention was entirely absorbed by George Knox, who was laying down a theory that the Reformation had caused a set-back of some hundred years in domestic sanitation.
... 'not religion - drains, drains, my dear Laura. If there was one thing the world before the Reformation thoroughly understood, it was Drains. Look at Norman castles. Show me the Norman castle you can explore without falling down a thirty-foot shaft at every corner.'
A. Thirkell, High rising (1933), 87 & 89
The Norman conquest of Sicily turned into something of a scandal. Norman minds dissolved in the vapours of Muslim culture. Austere knights of Honfleur and Bayeux suddenly appeared in the streets of Palermo wearing flowing desert robes, and attracted to themselves harems of staggering diversity, while the Church raged. Norman pashas built their own alhambras. the Normans went Muslim with such remarkable style that even Muslim poets were soon praising the new Norman Xanadus.
John McPhee, quoted in H. Attlee, The land where lemons grow (2014), 56
This is historical nonsense. John McPhee has clearly given no thought to the private lives of the Normans in Normandy.
