'What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.' So wrote Jane Austen to a friend today in 1796. This quotation is for my old enemies in the English and Geography Departments really. Geographers please note - global warming as far back as 1796, so stop whingeing and spreading tales of doom and panic. Englishers - why is your darling writing such tosh (see Persuasion, Northanger Abbey etc etc) when she should have been writing about the extraordinary French Revolution happening only a few miles away at the time.
In other news ...
Another one for the English Department. Samuel Johnson was born today in 1709, in Lichfield (shame!). He is heralded today as one of the first lexicographers in the world. In fact he was a neurotic bossy-boots with a nervous tic who is famous only because an equally neurotic bossy-boots - James Boswell - wrote down every word the great man uttered. To see Johnson put firmly in his place, see Robbie Coltrane's performance of him in Blackadder III; perfect!
