Britmageddon part 1

Like all great historical events, it began with an angry Scotswoman throwing her stool at a churchman. Or so the legend goes. The issue was a new prayerbook, with its alleged Catholic leanings, being imposed on Presbyterian Scotland by the government of Charles I (1625-1649). When it was first read, in the churchyard of St…

If Seventeenth Century Proverbs were Motivational Posters

Even though, alas, ‘Fair words butter no parsnips’.   — — — — — — — — Some truths are universal…. — And, er….  

In the Shadow of the Bum Courts

Is it a footballer? Is it an MP? No… it’s a Superinjunction! Yes, the infamous writ of Shut-The-Hell-Up is back. Someone’s been bad. But because they’re rich we’re not, repeat not, allowed to talk about it. Unless we’re in Parliament, or Scotland, or anywhere in the world part from England and Wales. The superinjunction is…

Pepys’s Poops!

Ah, Samuel Pepys. Our greatest diarist, Restoration man about town, zero-times winner of Husband of the Year. He’s someone who celebrated the date of his bladder-stone removal like clockwork, but once forgot his wedding anniversary. He’s probably the first known Englishman to record in detail the time he bought pornography (from a bookshop on the…