Elephants and Castles

An apocryphal story doing the rounds of history books an guides to London tells the tale that the district called "Elephant and Castle" owes its name to the landing of a Spanish princess in Newington in the early 1500's. The name "Infanta de Castile" supposedly was corrupted to the present name of "elephant and Castle". A more mundane explanation would be the old pub in the area that goes by the same name. In any case, I was reminded of this story by Daphne's article in today's Independent on Sunday.

In her last paragraph she rebukes all who insist on writing Castille (sic) instead of Castile when using the name in English without the full extension. Thus according to Daphne it is the Auberge de Castille but Castile Square. Obviously it would be Pjazza Kastillja (maybe one "l"?) in Maltese. I would add this complaint to the myriad other sillinesses that pepper our papers - from George Cross to Count Rogers.

Lots of White Elephants, lots of Castles in the sky... and the concrete? Oh for the concrete the government is taking care of that... we have a high-profile consultative board for tourism now. Which only means that they will have to hide a tad bit more when they need to make their low-profile announcement that the government's tourism plan will never kick off unless people can actually get here at a reasonable fare.

Have a good Sunday.