I enormously enjoyed reviewing a brilliant new biography of bucaneering naval hero and romantic icon Thomas Cochrane for @thetimes by @petermoore. It really is superb:
Reading a Georgette Heyer novel and I come across the phrase 'that's all my eye and Betty Martin', meaning 'a load of old nonsense'. Apparently it was naval slang with roughly this origin:
Events of recent months - and indeed the general intellectual atmosphere of much of the West, with its commitment to modish bullshit, reality-denying ideological extremism and dishonesty - continually bring to mind Kipling's verses in 'The Gods of the Copybook Headings':
I knew that both a turnip and horns were Jacobite anti-Hanoverian symbols (George I was allegedly a mere 'turnip farmer'; and was allegedly a cuckold) but I read that sometimes they were combined in one image. If anyone knows of any such depictions do share