U.K./Ireland Travel

Browsing on Amazon the other day I found a book called "I Never Knew That About England". It's one of a series of books by Christopher Winn, with other titles covering London, Scotland, The English, Wales, Ireland, and The Irish. If they're all as entertaining as this one, I'll be reading them forever more.

The England book is full of fascinating and unusual information about the 39 counties of England, arranged alphabetically from Bedfordshire to Yorkshire. Each chapter has only a short list of places covered, but they're the places about which the author has found out most of the fun facts he is obviously keen to share with the readers. Then each chapter ends with a page or two of short anecdotes about that particular county.

About my own county of Lancashire I learn that it's the place where the first steak was dubbed "Sir Loin", the county where the Quakers movement was founded, and where the Spinning Mule and Spinning Jenny were invented, though the author misses the fact that the geographic centre of Great Britain is near a phone box at Dunsop Bridge, and he also (tut-tut) mis-spells the name of my home town! It's St Helens, not St Helen's.

Among the stories in the book you'll discover where the first garden gnome in England appeared, where the first true aeroplane flight took place, and hear about England's first speeding ticket, where a policeman was able to catch up with the speeding car on his bicycle.

"I Never Knew That About England" is the perfect book for trivia fans, and compilers of pub quizzes everywhere. It's published at £9.99 by the Ebury Press. You can also sign up for a newsletter at the official I Never Knew That website.

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