Thursday, 2 June 2022

Literature and cider making took a hammering

›
The Dark Ages are indeed a little dark, what with plagues, famines, bad weather and invasions by Saxons, Vikings and Danes. Literature and c...
Wednesday, 1 June 2022

Persian apples were peaches

›
A word of warning: in Greek the word ‘melon’ is always taken to mean apples, but ‘melon’ covers a number of other fruits including pomegrana...
Saturday, 28 May 2022

Butterfly evolved from breaststroke in the 1930s

›
Butterfly, strangely enough, evolved from breaststroke in the 1930s, when practitioners discovered that an out-of-the-water arm pull was fas...
Friday, 27 May 2022

The second is a house for one of her relatives whose job it is to look after her wigs

›
[Dolly Parton's] house itself is less revealing than the two buildings alongside it, out of range of my camera. If we are to trust our g...
Thursday, 26 May 2022

The Coal Miner's Daughter Museum is one of the oddest museums I have ever visited

›
The Coal Miner's Daughter Museum is one of the oddest museums I have ever visited. Perhaps the oddest thing about it is that half the la...
Wednesday, 18 May 2022

It's like abroad: no one would want to go there if they hadn't been told it existed

›
'The three reasons for it [marriage] given in the Prayer-book have always seemed to me quite inadequate,' agreed Mr Prendergast. ...
Tuesday, 17 May 2022

I can think of no entertainment that fills me with greater detestation than a display of competitive athletics

›
'Frankly,' said the Doctor, 'I am at a loss to understand my own emotions. I can think of no entertainment that fills me with gr...