Strange Britain: England’s eccentrics

Too much money and power often breeds bizarre ideas, says David Long

COLUMN Lord Monboddo, an 18th-century judge, supposedly believed men were born with tails but that midwives concealed the anomaly by cutting them off at birth. Darwin’s cousin Sir Francis Galton devised a curious map showing where Britain’s most beautiful inhabitants lived, as well as the ugly ones. And as recently as the 1970s, the 8th Earl of Clancarty used his leverage in the House of Lords to try to prove that aliens didn’t arrive in UFOs but via tunnels through the centre of the earth leading from the North and South Poles. Ostentatious or absurdly secretive, inventive, reclusive or just plain bonkers, there’s something irresistible about eccentrics and rarely more so than when there’s a connection to our great country houses. Eccentricity is by no means restricted to the upper…

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Discover Britain (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2024 - January 2025

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