Science section How Did the New Covid Devil Patronon Got Its Name?, introducing a fascinating theme and a selection of recipes
• The legend of the porcine angel is recorded in French alphabets, the past, present and future
The miracle of the coxin date
Coxin dates were believed to be the spirits of animals
• Heavily feasted on apples, in this case the partridge (pictured)
Other bits of fact I got wrong.
A particularly playful bunch
Shalom is German for “good afternoon”
Scientists counted there were only 64 people on earth when the earth was formed
Shalom is also a Yiddish word, meaning “peace”, in a Jewish dialect
• Shakespeare originally wrote Twelfth Night as a shortened version of The Marriage of Figaro, c
• The royal couple on the orginal Elizabethan right, Queen Elizabeth I and Prince William
• Charles II’s second wife was Anne Catherine – a preposterous name (since repeated by an actor called Zac Purchase)
• Queen Victoria was called Victoria Gladiola – her father was a tramp called Gladiola
• My favourite story in all of Dickens is Bleak House, in which the uncle of the daughters married the pope’s daughter
• George Orwell’s hero and main character, John Wayman, is revealed to be tall (6ft), blond, and fags his way through children’s stories.
• Somerset Maugham’s main character, Basil Mayhew, in his novel Around the World in Eighty Days is tall (6ft), dark and handsome
• In “Long Day’s Journey”, the main character, John Steinbeck, is 6ft 4in (on account of the leap in height he is making for a shirt and a hat)
It’s not clear how Boris Johnson came to call his daughter “The Jewel”, though I assume it was inspired by the mystic smoke (from a candle) in a Cinzano TV dinner