On 22 July 1908, MPs who had studied at Balliol College, Oxford, gave a dinner in the House of Commons for the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, also a Balliol man. Asquith said that the bond which united them, “if their critics were to be believed, might be a tranquil consciousness of effortless superiority.”
Asquith put the phrase in the mouths of the college’s critics. The ideal it names is excellence that never shows the effort.
The Shipping Forecast was first broadcast on 1 January 1924, in Morse code. Since 4 July 1925, the BBC has read it aloud. Today it goes out on BBC Radio at 00:48 and 05:34, and at 17:54 on weekends.
It follows a very strict format, with a limit of 350 words, not counting the header line. It begins with gale warnings, then gives a general synopsis, then a forecast for each of the 31 sea areas around the British Isles.
In 1907, the new company Rolls-Royce prepared its new car, later known as the Silver Ghost, for the Scottish reliability trials. Immediately afterwards, the car began a 15,000-mile test that included driving between London and Glasgow 27 times. The aim was to show the reliability and quietness of the car.
The car was the origin of the phrase “the best car in the world,” which was coined not by Rolls-Royce but by the magazine Autocar in 1907.
On 18 April 1906, an earthquake and the fires that followed destroyed more than 80 percent of San Francisco. Some insurers refused claims, arguing that the policies covered fire but not earthquake, or the reverse.
The Lloyd’s underwriter Cuthbert Heath instructed his San Francisco agent to “pay all of our policy-holders in full, irrespective of the terms of their policies.” The prompt and full payment of every claim helped cement Lloyd’s reputation for paying reliably, and made it an important partner for American brokers.
Steady the Buffs! is an old British Army phrase, used as encouragement or as a warning to stay calm. The Buffs were an English infantry regiment, the Royal East Kent Regiment. Rudyard Kipling used the phrase in his stories Soldiers Three, published in 1888.
Its origin is disputed. One account credits an adjutant of the regiment in Malta.
On 25 October 1854, at the Battle of Balaclava in the Crimean War, about 500 men of the 93rd Highlanders stood between Russian cavalry and the British base. Their commander, Sir Colin Campbell, is said to have told them: “There is no retreat from here, men. You must die where you stand.” He formed them into a line only two deep. The cavalry withdrew.
The Times correspondent William Howard Russell described a “thin red streak tipped with a line of steel.” In later accounts he changed it to “thin red line.”
During the Second World War, the BBC German Service, set up in 1938, reported British and Allied setbacks to German listeners. On 27 November 1942, for example, it reported the scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon to keep it out of German hands.
Research at the University of Exeter, published in 2017, found that the aim was to become a trusted source of news. That meant even defeats had to be reported truthfully. The reasoning was that a side able to admit its defeats openly must be confident of winning.
One of the requirements for the Great Clock of Westminster, designed by Edmund Beckett Denison and the Astronomer Royal George Airy, was that the first stroke of the hour bell be correct to within one second per day. The clock still uses its original mechanism. It is known for its reliability.
The clock is adjusted by adding or removing old pennies on its pendulum.
On 17 March 1998, in his second budget speech, the chancellor Gordon Brown told the House of Commons: “I said that this would be a Budget based on prudence for a purpose.”
The year before, in his first budget, he had set the rule that the government would borrow only to invest and pay for current spending from taxation.
From 1984 to 1996, the ITV program Spitting Image mocked politicians and the royal family with grotesque puppets. The Labour politician Roy Hattersley was shown spitting with every word because of his lisp. He later praised his puppet for “putting the spit into Spitting Image.”
According to Stephen Fry, Diana, Princess of Wales, told him around 1991: “They hate it of course. I absolutely adore it.”