I am a BBC Radio4 addict. I find it difficult not to listen to Today, the World at One and PM through the day even when they are filled with irritating bits! I have many other favourite programmes and I even listen to Woman’s Hour quite often, but you can hear enough of female genital mutilation after a while.
I like quizzes and one of my favourites is Round Britain Quiz – a cryptic crossword of a quiz show. I also like In Our Time for its mixture of briefing on literature, history and science. I spent some time driving through the USA listening to relevant downloaded episodes this spring. As I headed for the Little Bighorn I listened to In Our Time on Custer’s Last Stand (and here, by the way, is something I wrote about the battlefield on a previous visit).
So here, in the manner of a Round Britain Quiz question, is a puzzle for you.
What links Owain Glyndwr (the subject of this week’s In Our Time) to an abundant American avian immigrant via The Bard of Avon and New York’s Central Park?
Can you work it out?
Answer below.
Answer below.
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Answer below.
Glyndwr crops up in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part 1 and the Welsh leader captured Edmund Mortimer at the Battle of Bryn Glas and held him captive. Hotspur wanted the King to ransom his cousin Mortimer but the King was having none of it. Hotspur said that he would train a Starling to go around saying Mortimer’s name all the time to nag the King into doing something. On the basis of its mention in Shakespeare the American Acclimatization Society introduced 60 Starlings into Central Park in 1890 and they were one of the main sources of the 200+ million Starlings that live in North America today. You see them just about everywhere!
How did you do? interesting isn’t it? But maybe my future is not in writing Round Britain Quiz questions.
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