I Blame Gutenberg

It's all his fault.

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Doesn’t look like she’s got the horn, eh.

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"Chapter 1. Watch out lads, those weird bastards in silly hats are about.

Chapter 2. Oooh look, a shiny thing.

Chapter 3. Ow! Fuck! That hurts! Get it off me! Arrrrrrgh!!

The end"

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Nothing says the Beatles like having a candle for a head. What's the reference? I can't think of one. Eleanor Rigby didn't have a candle for a head, neither did Polythene Pam, and as for Sgt. Pepper, he wore a hat, which doesn't do much for wicks.

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A quarter of a leaf from William Caxton's "The Golden Legend", printed in 1483, only 30 years after Gutenberg ruined things for everyone.

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I don't know how the story of margarine goes. Perhaps everyone works in harmony on co-operative farms and sings happy songs at night?

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A Nabob was an Indian provincial governor, or similarly important and wealthy person on the subcontinent. Whether they did in real life pour sauce down the throat of a startled-looking fish is open to question. A recipe I found for the stuff includes tamarind, turmeric, ginger and cumin as well as bunch of other ingredients. Your typical Victorian spicy mix to disguise the freshness (or otherwise) of the food, basically. I do feel a bit sorry for the fish, though. Heinz bought Batty & Co. in 1905 and that was the last we heard of them.

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Now, I don't speak German, but I'm pretty sure this 19th century advertisement is championing the virtues of having zombie children. Look at them. Look at their eyes. A couple of sips and both girls are soulless husks, their humanity taken by the evil broth. The boy on the left is looking at the packaging and thinking "No fucking way I'm eating this". Except in German.

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It would be nice to think that the Hitler Youth were this camp intentionally. But probably not, eh.

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Probably in 1959 the Bank of England was indeed "a career for men", as women, still exhausted from gaining equal voting rights 31 years earlier, were mostly fainting around the house occasionally summoning up the energy to bake a cake or clean something. Nowadays 43% of the Bank's employees are women, according to this report, and only 38% of them are tea-ladys. Hurrah for progress.

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HMS Dreadnought was launched in 1906 and it quickly became the general term for a new class of battleship. How, 25 years later, it seemed like a good idea to name a vegetable after it is anyone's guess. I suppose there are overtones of strength and nationalism, but then again a swede wouldn't be much cop at Scapa Flow (unless you had a lot of them and you were dropping them from space at a significant portion of the speed of light. Which, a collaboration between Monty Python and E.E. "Doc." Smith notwithstanding, seems unlikely). I also doubt they float very well. Still, Messr.'s Kent & Brydon of Darlington must have thought it was a good idea, bless them.

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Although this allegedly shows the raucous crew who've turned up for a lecture on "The Law of Warranty and Soundness in Horses", it was actually the monthly meeting of the Kashmiri Society for Inappropriate Dressing. That month's prize, in 113 degree heat, was won by the chap on the far left, who while rocking a pith helmet also wore his new three-piece wool suit and long johns.

Other favourites: the psycho with the shaved head four from the left who's taking time out from beating the natives for not memorising all the winners of the Derby, and the bright young thing second from the right who has chosen a jaunty diagonal design to go round his boater. The decline of the British Empire began there.

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Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) is justly famous as one of the finest English wood engravers and for his natural history books of birds and quadrupeds. But he also had a sense of humour, as this wood engraving of someone having, not to put too fine a point on it, a shit in a pig-sty proves. It originally appeared in early editions of his "Land Birds", and is often found censored, while later editions carried an amended image with a couple of planks covering up our defecator's modesty.

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Both sides of a flyer for the "Library of Romance" series published by Seeley, Service and Co. in the early 20th century. Not the Edwardian equiavalent of Barbara Cartland, but serious works of non-fiction. Some titles, yes, you can see it, various types of Exploration, Astronomy, Piracy or even Insect Life might well have a romantic edge to them. But the Romance of Modern Sieges? War Inventions? Submarine Engineering, for christ's sake? Never mind Coal or the rather unfortunately named "Romance of Savage Life". Different times.

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The Nazis have been called many things, but frightful is probably not often one of them. Taken from a British Army magazine printed in Cairo called The Parade, the article also notes that "There's little gay night life in London now". How did they know?

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I love Gollancz's habit of putting over-the-top quotations on their dust covers. Delightful and delicate it may but who's read it these days?

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You have to admire the Victorians. They didn't take any nonsense from any upstart baby bears. Shortly after this photograph was taken the bear was skinned and the pelt used to wipe Prince Albert's arse.