‘Here were the very people who for twenty years had hooted and jeered at the “glory” of war, atrocity stories, at patriotism, even at physical courage, coming out with stuff that with the alteration of a few names would have fitted into the Daily Mail of 1918. The same people who in 1933 sniggered pityingly if you said that in certain ( Read more... )

“At one moment during the fighting, a small group of workers and an assault guard rushed across to an insurgent artillery detachment with two 75mm guns. They held their rifles above their heads to show that they were not attacking as they rushed up to the astonished soldiers. Out of breath, they poured forth passionate arguments why the soldiers ( Read more... )

If a player is struck, that is always invalid [i.e. there is never any redress]. If a player is wounded, one who goes with a fiddle, and with a viol or drum, then a wild heifer is to be brought to the raised middle of the assembly place. Then all the hair is to be shaved off its tail and the tail greased. Then the player is to be given newly- ( Read more... )

“…hardly a single Saracen remained alive to carry the dreadful news back to Palermo. As things turned out, however, this proved unnecessary. Among the prizes of battle, and just as intriguing to Roger [de Hauteville] as the camels seized at Cerami, the Normans had carried off several baskets of carrier pigeons. […] It is unlikely that Roger ever ( Read more... )

“... the notoriously unreliable monk Radulph Glaber (the wildness of whose imagination was rivalled only by his private life, which gives him fair claim to have been expelled from more monasteries than any other littérateur of the eleventh century)”

“The magazine was later art directed by former Pentagram partner Fernando Gutiérrez, whose issues took in madness, prison and Birmingham.”