T Bell, MD, Kalogynomia, or the laws of female beauty (1821):
Professor Blumenbach of Göttingen, whose profound science and perfect impartiality no one can doubt, does not hesitate to say, that the English are the most beautiful people on the globe. Nor is this wonderful when we consider that ENGLAND, perhaps exclusively, presents the combination [...]

The other day, on this walk, an elderly Englishman from G. Speaking with an Andalusian accent, he claimed to be one of a group of Brits who, following the abortive Algiers putsch (aka putsch des généraux) against De Gaulle in 1961, fled the Marseilles barracks of the French Légion étrangère and crossed the Pyrenees to [...]

An excerpt in The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1835, translated by the excellent Louisa Stuart Costello, for whom the gents very sensibly made an exception:
If I must fly thee, turn away
Those eyes where love is sweetly dwelling,
And bid each charm, each grace decay,
That smile, that voice, all else excelling;
Banish those gentle wiles that won me,
And those [...]

Having a gunwoman riding pillion on the scooter seems a good idea, rather like female coxes in boat racing. One can imagine few worse distractions from one’s enduring preoccupation with road safety than having some big sweaty guy fiddling with his gun behind one’s back.

Mare de Déu Fumadora, Mother of God Smoker, is a local name used in Arenys de Mar on Catalonia’s Maresme coast for the day before yesterday’s feast of the Immaculate Conception, la Purísima. According to the much-maligned Jordi Bilbeny, this is the day when children were allowed to smoke by their parents (picture of kiddie [...]

Being yet more foolish speculation.