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Merry Christmas!

24 Dec 2010

Amazingly, we have snow lying on the ground on Christmas Eve in SE England - it will be a proper Christmas this year! Your Editor, with wife and parents-in-law will be spending the next few days making as traditional a party as we can manage, with a few additions and wrinkles, such as mulling our own cider (easy - just like mulled wine, except with cider instead). And of course it will be a Swedish Christmas, with a big ham instead a turkey taking pride of place on the table.

For the next few days, you are welcome to join a not too strenuous game on bdkr.com, very kindly suggested by Gareth Temple, a merry supporter of the site. We will publish some extracts from more or less well known works of literature, all, naturally, featuring Baedekers. When you recognise the piece, send an e-mail to info@bdkr.com with the name of the work and its author. The sender of the first received e-mail (perhaps taking into account differences in timezone!) will be the winner. The prize, however, will be limited to recognition as a man or woman of letters among the select group of Baedeker fans! :-)

Please feel free also to suggest other books...

We start with an easy one:

Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy. She puzzled out the Italian notices—the notices that forbade people to introduce dogs into the church—the notice that prayed people, in the interest of health and out of respect to the sacred edifice in which they found themselves, not to spit. She watched the tourists; their noses were as red as their Baedekers, so cold was Santa Croce. She beheld the horrible fate that overtook three Papists—two he-babies and a she-baby—who began their career by sousing each other with the Holy Water, and then proceeded to the Machiavelli memorial, dripping but hallowed. Advancing towards it very slowly and from immense distances, they touched the stone with their fingers, with their handkerchiefs, with their heads, and then retreated. What could this mean? They did it again and again. Then Lucy realized that they had mistaken Machiavelli for some saint, hoping to acquire virtue. Punishment followed quickly. The smallest he-baby stumbled over one of the sepulchral slabs so much admired by Mr. Ruskin, and entangled his feet in the features of a recumbent bishop. Protestant as she was, Lucy darted forward. She was too late. He fell heavily upon the prelate's upturned toes.

Incidentally, this and all other extracts to be published can be found on gutenberg.org - now there is a slight clue...

Good luck and all best wishes of the holiday season to all visitors to bdkr.com!

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