Amazing & Extraordinary Facts About Great Britain

The Making of Britain

An Island Nation?
Britain’s continental connection

Going to Extremes
A land of contrasts

Meet the Ancestors
Britain’s first immigrants

United by Geography, Divided by History?
England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland

The Tongue That Straddles the Globe
The pre-eminence of the English language

Hundreds of Years of Hurt
Britain’s beautiful game: football

Extraordinary Places

A Hitler Among the Scousers
Liverpool attracts all sorts

Want to Relocate Your Old Capital City?
Just call Boadicea

My Horse for Your Daughter?
Fair trading at Appleby’s horse fair

The Second City of the Empire
Glasgow’s green spaces and curry houses

Ancient Essex Man a Devout Breed
The oldest churches in Britain

Fractious French Exchange Programme Prompts Foundation of Britain’s Oldest University
Oxford’s dreaming spires

The Scottish Missionary Position
Cross-roads of early British Christianity

Linenopolis to Metropolis
Belfast’s Titanic shipbuilding feats

‘The Very Ramparts of Heaven’
Ancient Lincoln in need of repair

Wales’s Hidden Treasure-Trove
Local boys done good, too

Water Way To Have A Good Time
Boating at altitude

Pulling Out The Stops
Alfred the Great’s old organ

Dodgy Handshakes and Umpteen Takes
Rosslyn hits the limelight

Shells of the Non-Collectible Variety
Scarborough takes a pounding from the sea

Sixty Warriors to the Square Inch
Scones for afters?

Morning Campers!
The bracing charms of Skeggy

Cambria Ne’er Can Yield!
Sieges of Harlech

One-Way Ticket to The Eternal Underground
Woking: gateway to the Gods

Oldest and Oldest
Berrow’s Worcester Journal

The Venice of the West (Midlands)
The birthplace of British industry

Tearing Down the Walls
Derry’s identity crisis – all in the name of religion

The Heart of the British Film Industry
Ealing in black-and-white

The Underground Church
Resting place for a poet and a heroine

Kings, Queens and Princes

Murderer Assassinated by Shakespeare
The Princes in the Tower

Chariots of Ire
The revolting Boadicea

Medieval Myth or Real Romano-British Resistance Fighter?
King Arthur’s Round Table

Wessex Warrior
The life and times of Alfred the Great

The Importance of Being ‘Unraed’
Aethelred and Canute in need of better advisers

Prince of Wales Bowled Out
Wayward Hanoverian son checks out in style

The Bard Comes Down Hard on the Thane of Glamis
Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy: the Scottish Play

Robert the Bruce Bides his Time
Destiny of Scotland not set in stone The Guardian of Scotland
William Wallace — ‘Braveheart’

The Tragic Catholic Cousin of the Virgin Queen
Mary, Queen of Scots

Placid Cymru?
Welsh princes: a quarrelsome lot

William Conquers his Coronation Day Nerves
Beating the Christmas rush at Westminster Abbey

From Playboy Prince to Contemptible King
George IV: double-chinned son of a lunatic

Eminent Surgeons Save the Day with Acid, Scalpels and Cigars
World’s first appendectomy a success for new king

Two Divorces, One Abdication and a Trip to See Hitler
The Scandals of Edward and Mrs Simpson

‘Who Will Rid Me of this Turbulent Priest?’
Henry II bashes a bishop in the name of the law

Summary Execution, Cambridge University and Bloody Civil War
What did England’s worst kings do for us?

Oliver Who?
The Welsh ‘unknown’ who won the Battle of Naseby

A Grave End for Pocahontas
Native American princess unimpressed by Britain

British Food and Drink

Protein, Carbohydrate, Salt and Fat
Fish and Chips: Britain’s culinary gift to the world

You Are What You Eat
Dieting to death: a Stark choice

You’ve Never Had It So Good
Medieval peasant food

The Best Thing Since Sliced Flour and Water
The story of British bread

Nice Cold Ice Cold Milk
Good for infants, depressed students and disease transmission

‘Wine Is But Single Broth; Ale Is Meat, Drink and Cloth’
The British love of good beer

The Water of Life
Whisky: the Celtic tipple of choice

Forget Toothpaste: Clean Your Teeth With Sugar
In defence of the sweet stuff

Mashed-up Organs Boiled in Guts, Anyone?
A natural history of the haggis

Prostitutes Allegedly the Most Beautiful Women in Britain
In other news, potatoes cause leprosy

Gathered by Virgins
The British love affair with tea

Seeking a Healthy Balanced Diet? Go to War
Lake District ordeal for Nobel prize-winner

Marmite for the Masses!
The National Birthday Trust Fund

Disease and Death in the Pot and Bottle
Detecting fraudulent and deleterious adulterations

Champagne: Made in Britain!
But called ‘fizzy wine’ for copyright reasons

Mother Nature’s Bountiful Harvest
The ripe realities of early recycling

Keeping Up With The Cromwells
Mrs C: a fine cook and a better haggler

Britannia Rules the Waves Thanks to Pickled Cabbage
Scurvy and the French Navy defeated by British grocers

British Government: Politics, Money and the Law

Tories and Whigs
Bandits and covenanters

Speak Up Mr Speaker!
The historical reluctance to answer back

The King’s Jews
William the Conqueror’s heritage and the Jewish community in Britain

The Poll Tax
Ignore history at your peril

Father of English Literature Swaps Quill For Shears
Chaucer’s woolly stock-in-trade

Morton’s Fork
The crafty cardinal and the lost monasteries

Stamping Out the Smugglers
British efforts to prevent trade in untaxable contraband

Pitt’s Pictures and Daylight Robbery
A window into revenue-generation

William Pitt Strikes Again
Income tax: just a temporary arrangement, right?

Swamps and Midges Spread Diseases
Scotland declared bankrupt chasing an American dream

The South Sea Bubble Bursts
Prototype financial crisis caused by investments no-one understood

That’s Got to Hurt
Punishments of the Infamous, Pecuniary and Corporal varieties

Anything But Prison
Incarceration or the army

The Bloody Code
The unexpected risks to impersonating a pensioner

Extraordinary Britons

The Great Outlaw
The many faces of Robin Hood

Will the Schoolmaster?
Shakespeare’s lost years

‘A Certain Flush With Every Pull’
Inventing the lavatory

Curiosity Killed the Cat
Francis Bacon felled by frozen chicken

Brain of Britain
The genius of Isaac Newton

Doctor Pox
Edward Jenner’s gamble

All Steamed Up
Who really invented the steam engine?

Half Nelsons
Horatio the family man

‘Such a Damned Fool’
The Iron Duke’s affairs

Chip Off the Old Block
Brunel’s less famous father

The Reluctant Clergyman
Charles Darwin’s early years

Immortalized in Print
Dickens’s dysfunctional family

The Lady with the Calculator
Florence Nightingale’s gift for maths

The First Stamp
Rowland Hill’s revolutionary idea

Unforeseen Consequences
Alexander Graham Bell’s aid for the deaf

A Formidable Sisterhood
The first lady doctor

No Lighthouse on Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson’s family trade

Scouting for Boys and Girls
Baden-Powell mobilizes the young

From Cavalry Charge to the Nuclear Deterrent
Churchill’s epic career

Chapman of Tremadog?
aka Lawrence of Arabia

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
Britain’s famous spies

Local Heroes
Honoured at the pub

N
o nation has had a greater impact on the world than that small island off the north-west coast of Europe on which an obscure Germanic tribe landed some time in the fifth century AD, shortly after the Romans had left. They joined the native Celts and were soon joined by other immigrants: Vikings from Norway and Denmark; Normans from France; Catholic Irish and, from France again, Protestant Huguenots, fleeing persecution in their native land. Then came Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia and, in the twentieth century, immigrants from every corner of the British Commonwealth, bringing with them ideas and skills as well as vocabulary which would help to turn the dialect of that Germanic tribe into the language of the world. Many aspects of British history and culture are taught to people in foreign lands. They are taught about Magna Carta, Parliamentary democracy and the rule of law but very few Britons know that the Common Law, one of Britain’s gifts to the world, was the brainchild of a king who is better known for the murder of an archbishop. We take much for granted in our heritage. This book explores some aspects of that heritage that are less well known than they deserve to be.

Some of these are important, others are bizarre and some are both. For example Edward Jenner, who overcame the scourge of smallpox through vaccination would, in a more enlightened age such as ours, have been struck off the medical register for the way he went about his research. If Charles Darwin were an undergraduate at Cambridge in the twenty-first century he would probably be sent down for idleness and riotous behaviour. His father despaired of him. And is it really true that sauerkraut, pickled cabbage, not only helped Captain Cook to annex Australia to the British crown but also helped Britannia to rule the waves? And while we’re on the subject of food, how was it that the British population was better fed in the Second World War than it has ever been, before or since?