Stephen Halliday - Amazing and Extraordinary Facts about Great Britain

GREAT
BRITAIN

STEPHEN HALLIDAY

Britains continental connection

A land of contrasts

Britains first immigrants

England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland

The pre-eminence of the English language

Britains beautiful game: football

Liverpool attracts all sorts

Just call Boadicea

Fair trading at Applebys horse fair

Glasgows green spaces and curry houses

The oldest churches in Britain

Oxfords dreaming spires

Cross-roads of early British Christianity

Belfasts Titanic shipbuilding feats

Ancient Lincoln in need of repair

Local boys done good, too

Boating at altitude

Alfred the Greats old organ

Rosslyn hits the limelight

Scarborough takes a pounding from the sea

Scones for afters?

The bracing charms of Skeggy

Sieges of Harlech

Woking: gateway to the Gods

Berrows Worcester Journal

The birthplace of British industry

Derrys identity crisis all in the name of religion

Ealing in black-and-white

Resting place for a poet and a heroine

The Princes in the Tower

The revolting Boadicea

King Arthurs Round Table

The life and times of Alfred the Great

Aethelred and Canute in need of better advisers

Wayward Hanoverian son checks out in style

Shakespeares shortest tragedy: the Scottish Play

Destiny of Scotland not set in stone The Guardian of Scotland
William Wallace Braveheart

Mary, Queen of Scots

Welsh princes: a quarrelsome lot

Beating the Christmas rush at Westminster Abbey

George IV: double-chinned son of a lunatic

Worlds first appendectomy a success for new king

The Scandals of Edward and Mrs Simpson

Henry II bashes a bishop in the name of the law

What did Englands worst kings do for us?

The Welsh unknown who won the Battle of Naseby

Native American princess unimpressed by Britain

Fish and Chips: Britains culinary gift to the world

Dieting to death: a Stark choice

Medieval peasant food

The story of British bread

Good for infants, depressed students and disease transmission

The British love of good beer

Whisky: the Celtic tipple of choice

In defence of the sweet stuff

A natural history of the haggis

In other news, potatoes cause leprosy

The British love affair with tea

Lake District ordeal for Nobel prize-winner

The National Birthday Trust Fund

Detecting fraudulent and deleterious adulterations

But called fizzy wine for copyright reasons

The ripe realities of early recycling

Mrs C: a fine cook and a better haggler

Scurvy and the French Navy defeated by British grocers

Bandits and covenanters

The historical reluctance to answer back

William the Conquerors heritage and the Jewish community in Britain

Ignore history at your peril

Chaucers woolly stock-in-trade

The crafty cardinal and the lost monasteries

British efforts to prevent trade in untaxable contraband

A window into revenue-generation

Income tax: just a temporary arrangement, right?

Scotland declared bankrupt chasing an American dream

Prototype financial crisis caused by investments no-one understood

Punishments of the Infamous, Pecuniary and Corporal varieties

Incarceration or the army

The unexpected risks to impersonating a pensioner

The many faces of Robin Hood

Shakespeares lost years

Inventing the lavatory

Francis Bacon felled by frozen chicken

The genius of Isaac Newton

Edward Jenners gamble

Who really invented the steam engine?

Horatio the family man

The Iron Dukes affairs

Brunels less famous father

Charles Darwins early years

Dickenss dysfunctional family

Florence Nightingales gift for maths

Rowland Hills revolutionary idea

Alexander Graham Bells aid for the deaf

The first lady doctor

Robert Louis Stevensons family trade

Baden-Powell mobilizes the young

Churchills epic career

aka Lawrence of Arabia

Britains famous spies

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 Britains 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 were 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?