The censorship code of 1948 imposed ‘an absolute ban’ on the following: ‘Lavatories, Pre-Natal influences, Marital Infidelity, Effeminacy in Men, Immorality of any kind, suggestive references to Honeymoon couples, Chambermaids, Fig-leaves, Prostitution, Ladies Underwear, Lodgers and Commercial Travellers, and Animal Habits’. Since then, every one

There We Are Then,

She herself later said: ‘It’s been a huge advantage during my professional career that I’ve always looked like a cheerful, fat missionary. It wouldn’t be any use if you went around looking sinister, would it?’ Any student who visited her sunlit office was entirely unaware that she stored a small, bejewelled revolver in her safe.

Sex, sensation, pets, heroism: the four ingredients of headline news according to the former Daily Mirror columnist Donald Zec. So much for the subjects, but what about the art?

Sir Thomas Beecham would have agreed. His verdict on the art became notorious: ‘Try everything once, except incest and Morris dancing.’

According to the Daily Telegraph, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populated one in the world.

the proprietor of a mug house or shicker shop, the pub landlord or -lady, is not without his or her own monikers. Among the earliest labels, in the 1500s, were the lick-spigot, ale-draper, and cove-of–the-ken. Today you’re more likely to hear the governor or mine host. In the years in-between, and if you were fond of a tipple, you might have

The language of coffee belongs to Italy.

Shakespeare knew a thing or two about popularity contests. In his works he used the word unfriended several times to mean someone who has lost the hearts of everyone around them. Four hundred years before the arrival of Facebook, he already knew what it meant to be rejected from the tribe.