by Tom Fort
17. It was reported in the newspapers that the Queen’s youngest son asked for the title in preference to being made Duke of Cambridge. It was also reported that he did so after seeing the film Shakespeare in Love, which seems curious, as the character of the fictional Earl as portrayed by Colin Firth is that of a vain and vindictive popinjay.
18. Perhaps the best-known Roman road in Britain, the Fosse Way extends more than 180 miles between Exeter and Lincoln.
19. ‘Through joy and in hope of immortality’.
20. So designated in the 1990s because the man who would be Charles II took it to flee the country after being beaten by Cromwell’s forces at Worcester.
21. There is a marble sarcophagus in the church there carved with his gun, sword and sextant and the inscription A NILO PRAECLARUS. The Union Flag that once fluttered at Jinja on the shore of Lake Victoria hangs next to it, near a weird stained-glass window depicting the finding of Moses in the bullrushes and bearing the words: ‘Let These Bones Live’.
22. The tree survived the Great Storm of 1703 but was finally upended by a hurricane on Ash Wednesday 1897, although its gnarled and withered stump still lies in a field near the church.
23. Gurney subsequently adapted the concept of the steam jet that had powered his carriage to a fire-fighting device, and eventually took charge of ventilation and lighting at the House of Commons for which work he was knighted.
24. For more on this absorbing subject the reader is referred to Moran’s On Roads pages 57–72.
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