Terry Pratchett - Jingo

When the First World War broke out, Britons were much comforted by the fact that the supposedly unstoppable “steamroller” of the Russian army was on their side. Rumours spread that Russian troops were landing in Scotland to reinforce the British army, and these troops could be recognised by the snow on their boots. Ever since, the story has been a standard joke about the gullibility of people in wartime.

Legend tells of Sweeney Todd, a barber in Fleet Street, London, who would rob and kill (not necessarily in that order) solitary customers, disposing of their bodies via a meat-pie shop next door. The story is celebrated in a popular Victorian melodrama, in a 1936 film, in a musical by Stephen Sondheim (1979), and in rhyming slang (“Sweeney Todd” = “Flying Squad”, an elite unit of the Metropolitan Police).

The story was the most successful of a spate of such shockers dating from the early 19th century. Sawney Bean, the Man-Eater of Midlothian was supposedly based on a real 13th-century Scottish legal case; also published about this time were two French versions, both set in Paris. All of these were claimed to be based on true stories — but then, this pretence was standard practice for novelists at the time. The “original” version of Sweeney Todd was written by Edward Lloyd under the title of The String of Pearls , published around 1840.

Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy from the Texas Schools Book Depository, on the fifth floor.

Mr Potato Head is a child's toy based on putting facial features on a potato. Nowadays, Mr Potato Head, produced by Hasbro Inc, has a plastic body and has achieved great fame by starring in the Toy Story films.

In later editions of the book, this sentence was altered to ‘Snowy can barely read and write’ — presumably for consistency with the Clue about the notebook.

The Riot Act was an old British law that allowed the authorities to use deadly force to break up crowds who were gathered for subversive purposes, such as trade unionists or Chartists. It was an unusual law in that it had to be read out to the crowd before it came into force — hence the significance of Detritus' attempt to read it — and the crowd was then supposed to be given a reasonable time to disperse. However, it was wide open to abuse, and was associated with some very nasty incidents, such as the Peterloo Massacre in 1818. It was not finally abolished in the UK until the mid-20th century, when the government decided that it would not be an acceptable way to deal with the regular riots then taking place in Northern Ireland.

Named after the most famous archer of English mythology: Robin of Locksley, AKA Robin Hood.

In our world, there really do exist ‘reflex bows’: they are a type of bow that will curve away from the archer when unstrung.

“Stoolie” is sometimes an abbreviation for “stoolpigeon”, a police informant. Of course, a stool is also something you might find in an Ankh-Morpork street.

It has been pointed out — and I feel bound to inflict the thought on others — that Stoolie is technically a grassy gnoll. (And if that doesn't mean anything to you in the context of political assassinations — be thankful.)

A reference to the shampoo ‘Wash and Go’, a trademark of Vidal Sassoon.

Another reference to the shampoo ‘Wash and Go’, a trademark of Vidal Sassoon.

According to legend, Dis is also the name of a city in Hell — particularly appropriate to a demon-powered organiser.

One of the most intractable disputes in the early Christian church was over the nature of Christ — to what extent he was God or man. In 325, the Council of Nicea tried to settle the question with the Nicean Creed, but the dispute immediately re-emerged over a single word of the creed: one school said that it was “homoousios” (of one substance), the other that it should be “homoiousios” (of similar substance). The difference in the words is a single iota — the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet — and the schism (between Eastern and Western churches) continues to this day.

“Shaving” is a method of marking cards by trimming a very, very thin slice from one edge, perceptible only if you know what to look for.

Caliph was the title of the leader of the Muslim world, from the death of the Prophet in 632 onward; although the title has been divided and weakened since the 10th century, it was only officially abolished by the newly-formed Republic of Turkey as recently as 1924.

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (1780–1831), a Prussian general who fought against Napoleon, wrote a standard textbook On War ( Vom Kriege , first published 1833), in which he said that “war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means”. If you want to understand Lord Rust's mindset as expressed by someone with a working brain, read Clausewitz.

When Jingo was being written, there was much speculation about whether “mad cow disease” had first been transmitted from sheep to cattle, and whether it could be transmitted from cattle to humans. Both ideas are now widely accepted.

Many British army regiments have, or had, nicknames of this sort, based either on some historical event or on some idiosyncrasy of their uniforms. The marching song is a famous old tongue-twister: “I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's mate/ I'm only plucking pheasants since the pheasant plucker's late.” (Another variant substitutes “son/come” for “mate/late”.)

Apparently there are “well-documented” cases of this sort of miraculous escape, but it has become a much-parodied staple of Boys' Own -style fiction. One well-known occurrence comes at the very end of the Blackadder III television series. Another can be found in the 1975 movie The Man Who Would Be King , starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.

Medieval Arab legend identifies the source of the Nile as being in “the Mountains of the Moon”.

A direct quote from Tennyson's poem Sir Galahad :

There's a pub in Bath called “The Saracen's Head”, which supposedly has a similarly colourful history.

‘Veni vidi vici’ (‘I came, I saw, I conquered’) is a quotation attributed to Julius Caesar, one of several great generals who contributed to the composite figure of Tacticus.

There are similarities between Tacticus' book, as expounded later in Jingo , and The Art of War by the Chinese general Sun Tzu.

General Patton, addressing his troops in 1942: “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”

From the beginning of every episode of the television series Mission: Impossible .