Boadicea Stands Guard
Standing guard opposite the Houses of Parliament is Boadicea, or as she is more normally spelled these days, Boudica.
Boadicea Stands Guard
She may or may not have defeated the Romans, as whatever happened they remained in Britain.
Her spirit lives on, especially in East Anglia. She probably came from that region, although no-one is sure quite where! I have heard several people say, including my father, that if the Germans had landed in Suffolk in the Second World War, they would have got similar treatment to that meted out by Boadicea and her ragbag army of upwards of 100,000 men. When questioned as to the legitimacy of this treatment under the Geneva Convention, a common reply was “What would Boadicea have done?” I don’t know the truth of all these reports, but I know Suffolk people well and they wouldn’t have taken an invasion lightly.
Some also say that her tribe, the Iceni, were the supreme horsemen, who when their horses were suffering from horse sickness, looked for a new and healthier place to raise them. They found this valley in the chalk downs and moved there, calling the place New Horse Market. In time this was corrupted to Newmarket. The town is the world centre of horse racing and breeding, known amongst racing people as Headquarters. Every thoroughbred can trace their ancestry back to this small town in Suffolk.
Do Tinned Artichokes Make You Rich?
I’ve just looked up the richest women in the UK.
I was once in Waitrose in Newmarket and one of the top ten was buying lots of tinned artichokes.
Is there a connection?
The Battered Stick Together
When you’ve been through what I have, you tend to follow others, who’ve triumped over adversity.
Although, C & I bred racehorses for many years, I don’t follow racing much, these days.
But I was pleased to see a report in The Telegraph that Henry Cecil has the favourite for the flat season’s first classic, the 2,000 Guineas. Henry has been battling cancer for some years and where lesser men would have crawled into a hole and hid or given up altogther, Henry has just kept going.
I shall be putting a couple of pounds on Frankel.
World Heritage Sites
Listening to the warm-up to the Grand National today on Radio 5 this morning, it struck me that none of the UK’s historic racecourses are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Liverpool city centre is but surely one of Aintree, Ascot, Epsom and Newmarket should be listed.
After all Newmarket and the Heath have been associated with horses since the time of Boudicca. Newmarket is actually a corruption of New Horse Market. And every thoroughbred horse can trace its ancestry back to the small town in West Suffolk.
And when it comes to other places that should be listed, the Forth Bridge is rightly on the provisional list, but Joseph Balzalgette‘s historic London sewers are not!
The Anonymous Widower 