Published in 1791, James Boswell`s The life of Samuel Johnson is still the greatest biography in the English language and a gold mine of conspicuous erudition. In fact, in the days, not so very long ago, when people aspired to intellectual superiority the way they currently yearn for …
You may not be aware, but the acclaimed author of Ulysses was also an unashamed underwear fetishist. He was aroused by just looking at his wife Norah`s knickers and insisted she left them around the house. Not content with keeping his peccadilloes private, he was also in the habit of …
Gaius Valerius Catullus came from a well-to-do family in Verona, Italy, and owned a villa himself near fashionable Tivoli, but as a young man soon settled into a decadent life in Rome. As a poet in training, he idled with other ink-stained scriveners and lowlifes, striving to integrate a …
Well, it is an accounting convention, first recorded by the Franciscan friar Dominic Luca Pacioli in his 1494 blockbuster, Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalità. Pacioli didn’t invent the set of accounting techniques he described, which were in use in mainly Venetian banking circles, but he was the …
The French cannot do pop music. Everybody knows this except the French. I recently met a fellow in my local pub who had a theory to explain this gallic failure. He said that all the best pop songs have Germanic lyrics. English is basically made up of Germanic words …
The very first modern bra was introduced to the ladies of New York by Mary Phelps Jacob (1891 -1970), a prominent socialite. Her primary concern was not comfort, bearing in mind corsets were still in vogue, but appearance. In 1913, in preparing to go to a swanky ball, she decided …
According to a Dr Jennifer Batt, a dirty poem has recently been discovered by John Milton within the pages of the “Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany” published in 1708. It was to quote the good doctor ” written by witty young men about town for witty young men about town”. …
The internet is truly a wonderful thing. I came across a most peculiar book – The Early Civilization of China by an Arthur Coterill. In it he tells a rather odd story. “A most distinguished scholar died and found himself standing before the King of the Underworld. When the monarch accidentally …
If you have ever expressed yourself on an express train, you may have wondered about the origin of the expression and why it should expressly mean that. You may then have settled down with an espresso and an Iarnrod Eireann soggy sandwich and forgotten all about it. Once upon …
People at “loggerheads” are considered to be confronting each other. In the 15th and 16th centuries a ‘logger’ was the name given to a heavy wooden block fastened to the legs of grazing horses, enabling them to move slowly around a field but not to jump fences or stray too …
