15th August

The Scottish king died today in 1057. I can't mention his name of course, in deference to my thespian friends (there's never been a law against that, by the way) but you know who I mean. Shakespeare made up the twaddle about the murder of Duncan, the mad wife, the tendency to see daggers everywhere and the marching wood of Dunsinane. And he pinched most of that from a bloke called Hector Boyce who went on to write the screenplays of several of the Hamish Macbeth (oh, damn!) series.

In other news ...

I had to put my cane away today in 1977. Actually that's a bit of a metaphor. I never used the cane in my life (my private life is my private life) and note how sneaky it was of the government to ban corporal punishment in schools during the summer hols - how are you enjoying the hols, by the way, parents? Tired of the little dears yet? They can be tiring, day after day, can't they?

Where was I? Oh yes - I didn't use the cane, I just used the old, tried and tested methods of plugging little delinquent Johnny into the mains, hanging willful Sarah up by the hair and forcing the whole of Seven bee Oh to eat a Jamie Oliver school dinner.

Parents - don't try this at home.

11th July

Thomas Bowdler was born today in 1754. He was the chappie who rewrote Shakespeare and Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire without the rude bits (which is odd, because try though I might I've never found any rude bits in Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).

Here is Bowdler's version of a Lenny Bruce performance -

'Hi.'

In other news ....

Larry Olivier died today in 1989. That's Lord Olivier to you and me, by the way. Whether you hate his camp delivery or regard him as the greatest actor of all time, he got it absolutely right shortly before his death when he said, 'Acting is a masochistic form of exhibitionism. It is not quite the occupation of an adult.'

29th June

Forget the telly and the cinema - you can't beat live theatre. Today in 1603, Will Shaxsper was putting on his Henry V at the Globe Theatre and when the king came on, a real cannon was fired using real gunpowder. So far, so dramatic but unfortunately the place caught fire and burned down. Interviewed by The Stage the playwright said, 'These things happen. You can't write Hamlet without breaking a few eggs.'

In other news ...
What possessed this great country of ours to wait until today in 1801 to carry out the first census? Wouldn't 1800 have been neater? Or 1810? Incidentally, for the record, in 1801 there were 26,816 Jedi knights in the country. Where are they now?

11th June

On this day back in 1509 the marriage took place of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. The poor girl had been kept dangling about, ignored and broke, after her first husband, Henry's big brother Arthur (whose first wife was Guinevere) died. Arthur was only a lad himself at the time and Catherine claimed the marriage was never consummated (which was not what Arthur said, by the way). The whole thing ended in tears, of course, when Henry discovered that his new wife was playing fast and loose with Lancelot du Lac whose illegitimate son Kid Galahad had just been played by Elvis Presley, in the film of the same name.

I hope you're paying attention to all this. I am an historian, you know.

In other news ...
Ben Jonson was born today in 1572. He was a poet and playwright, well known on the London scene for his short temper (he once killed a man in a duel). Shakespeare referred to him as 'Rare Ben Jonson' but actually he was pretty unique and far more interesting than the rather boring little glover from Stratford.

2nd May

The Pink Floyd single Another Brick in the Wall was banned today in 1980 by the South African government. And quite right too. Rumour has it that the white supremacists in charge were convinced that the lyrics would inflame black schoolchildren. actually, of course, they were complaining about the appalling lack of grammar in said lyrics. they ought to have read -

'We would rather not have any education.
We would rather not have any thought control.
Excuse me, sir, would you mind not attempting to punish those children.'

There, that's much better.

In other news ...
Lady Nancy Astor was born and died on 2nd May, albeit several years apart. She is reputed to have asked her son, 'Jakie, is it my birthday or am I dying?'
Jakie answered, 'A bit of both, Mum.'

Isn't that cool?

I wonder if Shakespeare came out with the same idea in 1616?

'Faith, sirrah, is this the day I sprang full-formed into this breathing world or will I see the Scythesman spread his black cloak o'er everything?'
To which his daughter Judith may well have replied, 'I dunno.'

I break the habit of this Blog so far to wish a person of my acquaintance a very happy birthday. He is a Renaissance man of the most amazing kind, musician, writer, poet, actor, amazing son and incredible father and all round good egg. In case he hasn't guessed it from that introduction - Taliesin; you know who you are! Many happy returns.

23rd April

The Man of the Millennium died today (no, not Churchill - that was a piece of propaganda put about by the Conservative Party) when the 'upstart crow' aka the 'swan of Avon', William Shakespeare went to that great theatre in the sky in 1616. Brilliant though his plays and poetry still are, the jury is still out on whether he actually wrote anything other than bills and petty-minded litigation. How, his critics ask, could he have written about -

• Italy, when he'd never been there,
• War, when he'd never been a soldier,
• Shylock, when he'd never even seen a Jew
• Etc
• Etc

People in his native Stratford seemed to regard him as a burgess (his dad made gloves and was involved in local politics) and a fairly stupid one at that; certainly not as a great playwright.

I think he did write the plays but I also think his real genius was in pinching ideas, lines, even whole scenes, from anybody careless enough to leave their own work lying around. Hence his immortal line in Romeo and Juliet - 'A plagiarism on both your houses.'

In other news ...
Well, more of the same, really. In 1879 (and on the very same day Shakespeare died - what a coincidence!) the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre opened in Stratford. The building burned down in the 1920s to be replaced by the monstrosity that still stands.

Will must have been turning in his grave (which is down the road, by the way, in Holy Trinity Church - and it'll only cost you £67.83 to have a look at it [last year's prices - who knows how much it will cost in the season of 2012])

Oh - by the way. It's St George's Day today.

15th February

Today, 448 years ago, Mrs Galilei gave birth to a healthy bouncing baby boy. She and Mr Galilei spent hours thinking of what to call him - Rainbow, Moon Unit, Zabaglione - but in the end plumped for something nearer to home and called him Galileo. How's that for the power of the imagination?
Incidentally, he was born in 1564, the same year as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, but they never met Spooky, isn't it?

In other news ...
Somebody else born today (in 1748 in fact) was Jeremy Bentham, the radical philosopher who gave the world Utilitarianism. This basically means the greatest happiness of the greatest number when applied to politics, although the phrase itself was Joseph Priestley's and Bentham pinched it. He invented a sort of clapometer to measure happiness - the Felicifi Calculus - but since he didn't know about, for example, sadism or masochism, his results were always going to be flawed.
He also founded University College London - the working man's college - and in his will insisted he be able to continue to watch over the students. I'm not sure if he's still there, but I remember seeing the great man in a glass case at the end of the main corridor. He's sitting on a chair with his thigh bones poking out of his worn breeches. His head is a wax copy, but the real one is in the hat box between his feet. The cleaners of course will tell you that every night, he gets up and has a stroll around the old place.
Yeah, as Nine Pee Pee would have it, right.

14th February

Don't you just love saints' days? There are so many of them that nobody worked at all during the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution happened first in Britain because we didn't have any at all. Except St Valentine's Day. Now this is all rather odd because there are two possible Valentines after whom the day is named. one was an early Christian priest put to death in the reign of Claudius the Goth (you couldn't miss him - black hair, purple makeup, didn't like sunlight). The other one was the Bishop of Turin, executed in Rome in a similar clampdown against what was, after all, a heretical sect. neither of these men had anything to do with Love, Hearts, Cupid or nauseatingly schmaltzy greetings cards, so work it out for yourselves. It may be that the 14th of February was seen as the start of the mating season, but this is a Family Blog so we won't pursue that.

All we can be sure of is that in Chicago in 1929 the day was celebrated by Al Capone shooting seven of 'Bugs' Moran's heavies in a garage on the North Side. Three of the five executioners wore police uniforms, though whether they were real cops or just Capone's people in fancy dress was open to doubt. Since half of Chicago's  finest were under investigation for corruption at the time, you just couldn't be sure.

In other news ...
Richard II died today in 1400. I've always felt rather sorry for this guy. He was high-handed, didn't like the Irish and popularized the use of a) forks b) handkerchiefs and c) riding sidesaddle - for ladies of course; nothing 'funny' about Richard II. He also had a cool heraldic badge - the White Hart (that's a deer to you, Seven Emm Eff) now famous as a pub sign throughout the civilized world. He was almost certainly murdered in Pontefract Castle (or Pomfret, as Shakespeare called it, thereby proving that England's greatest playwright was also dyslexic) on the orders of Henry IV (who later, as you'd expect, denied it).

12th February

John Donne - pronounced Dun - the Dean of St Paul's, died today in 1631. After Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilde, Shaw, Marlowe, Sheridan and Enid Blyton, he is the most quoted writer in history. As I often say to Ten Aitch Dee, 'Never send to know for whom the school bell tolls; it may fall on thee.' My good lady, the Detective Inspector and I have a small and harmless hobby, of listening for John Donne quotes in unlikely situations. We think we have heard the ultimate now, so may have to rethink how we spend our leisure time. Out and about recently, Nolan, whose bladder is the size of a carrier bag when at home but a walnut when driving anywhere, needed a pee. We stopped at a peculiarly greasy cafe on the side of the road and because we are very polite people, bought something to eat and drink rather than just widdling and running. This may be why we have to stop so often of course - Nolan always seems to take in far more liquid than he gets rid of on these little pauses in our journey. Note to self - think about joining the thousands of people who let their kids wee on the hard shoulder ... Where was I? Yes, well, in this cafe there was suddenly a deafening crash as a tray full of crockery hit the deck and in the ringing silence which followed one voice, in a strong (and in a dark alley very menacing) Glaswegian voice said simply, 'No man is an island' and suddenly everybody rushed to help. Humanity is alive and well and driving a lorry somewhere in England.

In other news ...
Back in 1831, J W Goodrich of Boston (Mass) invented the rubber galosh. Now, I'm quite intrigued by this. Did Mr Goodrich invent one galosh, intending it to become a international sport - 'Premier League Galoshing'? Or did he perhaps only have one leg (as Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, may they rest in peace, would have it, was he a unidexter) thereby not needing to waste yet more time on as second galosh? Was he actually working on a revolutionary cloning technique at the same time so that he need ever only invent one galosh?
And when it comes right down to it, what is a galosh anyway? I am, frankly, at a galosh to explain it.

PS - I fully expect, dear Blog Follower, that galosh will now replace Stephen Fry's Garboldisham as the silliest word in the English language.

3rd February

Old time-honoured Gaunt, father of Henry IV, popped his sollerets today in 1399. I've always felt a bit sorry for this guy, what with the peasants being revolting enough to tear down his palace at the Savoy in 1381 and nobody being able to pronounce his name properly - it was actually Ghent, of course. Richard II also gave him a hard time and even when Gaunt's little boy became Henry IV, his reign was plagued by wars and rebellions. Which just goes to show that money, land, palaces, titles and getting a starring role in Shakespeare can't buy you happiness.

In other news ...
Thirty three years ago today, Yasser Arafat became leader of the PLO. A Head of Music at Leighford, now moved on to higher things - I believe he busks in Notting Hill most Saturdays - could never understand why so many people did as they were told by the erstwhile conductor of the Plymouth Light Orchestra.

It is looking as though Nolan might be going to be musical, one of those strange genetic quirks that sometimes happens. I for example can tell two tunes apart, if someone stands in front of me and shouts the name of one of them very loudly and repeatedly, while smacking me round the head. My good lady can tell all kinds of tunes one from another and can sing after a fashion. I wish instead of singing she would stop the shouty person coming into the house while I am trying to listen to music, though. But Nolan has the voice of an angel and is being taught the recorder by Mrs Troubridge; fortunately for Metternich's temper, the lessons take place chez Troubridge.

6th January

Twelfth Night and about time too. At last we can take down the Christmas Tree, now needleless and looking like a nuclear blast survivor and stash the tinsel away for another year. Nolan and the Count (son and cat, in that order for those of you unfamiliar with the Maxwell menage) are already counting the weeks until next Christmas but let them count; as long as I don't run another pine needle into my foot for around another forty nine weeks, that is enough for me. The sole point of this day is that it gave Will Shaxper of Stratford a title for one of his hilariously funny comedies. How we laughed.

In other news ... Sigmund Freud, dream analyst and inventor of the slip, grandfather of the late Lucien and Clement, wrote in 1938, 'What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.'
'They' of course were the Nazis who had just taken over Freud's native Austria in the Anschluss (Union). He was wrong of course - within five years the Nazis would be burning people as well.
Incidentally, they'd all got Freud's number. He was in the Black Book, a list of undesirables living in Britain drawn up by the SS in 1940. Had Operation Sealion worked and Hitler actually invaded Britain, Freud would have got his after all. Actually, though, he wouldn't. Although the compilers of the Black Book seemed unaware, he died in his bed in September 1939.