French, Cockney, Dutch in Borrow

Glad to see the French are bemoaning the death of Cockney. There’s a lovely bit in George Borrow’s Romany Rye where he has moved into an inn in which there was a barber and hair-dresser, who had been at Paris, and talked French with a cockney accent; the French sounding all the better, as no…

Too fat to fight

Holidays amidst grossly obese and peaceful Brits, whose beer doesn’t come with a free hangover, whose Big Macs cost less in nominal terms than those in Barcelona (£1.88 vs €2.89), and whose heavens never cease to tell the exceeding dampness of him upstairs. The firmament proclaims no love, alas, but Messrs Macaulay and Borrow are…