The Breezer - the joyride for a curious mind: A weekly newsletter from me, Steve Winduss, at the Batting the Breeze podcast. Spend a few minutes with me discovering historical snippets and fascinating facts related to the forthcoming week. Add to that updates relating to the podcast, a touch of humour and a dash of "lots more". - 2nd February 2025.

​

Happy Sunday!

​

Having just watched England comfortably beaten in the fourth of five T20 cricket games by India, it seemed like a good time to continue the theme and pick out some historical tidbits relating to India and the British Empire.
​
Last Sunday marked the 95th anniversary of the first declaration of Purna Swaraj, 26 January 1930. Purna Swaraj was declared by the Indian National Congress, resolving to gain complete independence from British rule.

​
Seventeen years later in 1947, after nearly 200 years, the British left India.

​
It was a further three years before the adoption of India’s new Constitution, 75 years ago last Sunday, 26 January 1950. India now celebrates this date each year as Republic Day.

​
The British Empire was fractured after World War I and broken following World War II. Britain had spent nearly a quarter of its total wealth on the war effort to defeat Hitler and was effectively bankrupt.

​

​

​

​
Trying to sustain and control faraway colonies was no longer economically viable. In any case, British colonisation certainly wasn’t going to be sanctioned by the new superpower - the United States of America.

​
Lord Louis Mountbatten, the Last Viceroy of India, was sent to oversee a classically British shambolic exit.

​

Poor planning and an unseemingly hasty withdrawal catalysed one of the largest mass migrations in human history. Eight million Muslims relocated to the new Pakistan in the West, while a similar number of Hindus migrated East.

​

Out of curiosity...​
Seventy-seven years ago last Thursday, 30 January 1948, shortly after 5 p.m., Nathuram Godse stepped forward from a gathering crowd outside The Birla House in New Delhi. He fired three times into the chest of Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi died shortly after.
​
Godse was a Hindu nationalist, frustrated at Gandhi’s pro-Muslim stance and his support for Pakistan, the new country carved out as part of the agreement for British withdrawal from India.
​
The name Pakistan first entered the lexicon after the president of the All India Muslim League suggested that the four northwestern regions of India should form a separate Muslim state:
​
​Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan. Pakstan was later changed to Pakistan.

It’s a running joke in England that if a visitor from overseas asks to go to a typical English restaurant, we would take them to a curry house.
​
Historians, scholars and philosophers continue to debate the net effect of British rule in India. However, there can be no disputing that the prominence of curry houses across England stands as a glorious legacy to our historical ties with India.
​
My introduction to curries (well, British versions) was reasonably typical. I was a student in Manchester in the ‘80s. Beer often shared centre stage in weekend evening entertainment.
​
After beer, everyone would be 'starving'. The Indian restaurants stayed open later than most and were prepared to soak up this late-night liquified traffic.

Out of curiosity…
Perhaps our Indian hosts had drawn inspiration for their late-night strategy from Emma Lazarus’ poem, The New Colossus, on display inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty?
​

Once seated in the curry house, muscle-flexing would begin when the waiter brought the menus. Biryanis, Kormas and Pasandas were off-limits… too mild. Entry-level was a Madras, but barely acceptable. Vindaloo was the ultimate weapon of choice.
​
That is, until I discovered the Phaal. The Phaal is a supercharged Vindaloo. I am sure it was concocted by the Bangladeshis to toy with English lager louts who demanded their hottest curry.
​
To choose a Phaal was a guarantee to leave your competition behind, but committed you to an evening of excruciating pain.
​
The pain would arrive in three stages; mild distress as the first hint of spice touched your lips, agony as the gathering fire worked its way to the back of your throat and complete misery as the raging inferno travelled south.
​
Common decency prevents me from elaborating on the 2-3 day aftermath.
​
On one occasion, while ordering, my mouth opened without engaging my brain. “I’ll have a Phaal… and make it hot”, I blurted.
​
As the dish was served, I remember the chef peeping through the kitchen hatch to observe what happened next.
​

​
Sake Dean Mahomed was an Indian soldier serving in the army of the British East India Company towards the end of the 18th century.
​
Following a trip to Ireland in 1782, Mahomed married and settled in England. In 1910, he decided to share a little piece of India in the form of authentic Indian cuisine, hookah and cultural decor.
​
The Hindoostane Coffee House opened its doors in London 215 years ago today, 2 February 1810. It is considered the first Indian restaurant to be opened in the UK.
​
Unfortunately, Mahomed’s venture was a little ahead of its time and collapsed only two years later.
​
Ever the entrepreneur, Sake moved to Brighton to open Mahomed’s Baths, offering Indian-style shampooing massages and herbal steam baths.

​

​

​
​
These proved popular among the British elite, supported by the patronage of Kings George IV and William IV.
​
Another 100 years would pass from the opening of Mahomed’s original enterprise before Indian restaurants gained traction in England.
​
However, the real English curry house boom arrived in the 1960s and 70s. Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis immigrated to England to escape the ongoing tension and economic hardship caused by the British withdrawal from India back in 1947.
​
Sake Dean Mahomed died peacefully in Brighton in 1851. He was 92 years old.

Out of curiosity...
Orville Wright, one half of the legendary Wright brothers duo who built the world’s first aeroplane to fly successfully, died on the same day as Mahatma Gandhi, 30 January 1948.

​

Can you think of a time when you’ve tried to improve some aspect of your life, only to experience an unintended consequence that makes things worse?
​
We often see examples in political situations. Perhaps a government looks to raise money by increasing tax on specific goods. It might transpire that the disincentive to buy the goods in the first place is so great, the overall tax revenue actually goes down.
​
The German economist Horst Siebert first coined the phrase, “The Cobra Effect” to illustrate this phenomenon. He used an example from the days of the British Raj in India to support his ideas on how to avoid misguided economic policies:
​
It’s the late 19th century. India is under British rule. In Delhi, the British authorities are concerned about the rapidly growing number of venomous cobras populating the city.
​
So, the British introduce an incentive whereby the government would pay a bounty for each dead cobra turned in.

​

​

​
​
In response, entrepreneurial Indian citizens started breeding cobras in large numbers to collect ever greater bounties. Once the British realised what was going on, the bounty scheme was aborted.
​
At this point, cobra breeding ceased and the breeders then released thousands of worthless cobras back into the wild.
​
The natural cobra population increased dramatically, and the original cobra crisis was much worse than before the incentive was introduced.
​
​It’s not entirely clear if Siebert’s story was more anecdote than reality, but it served a purpose to get the point across.

Dates with History

Eleanor Gywnn was born in London 375 years ago today, 2 February 1650*. She was born into poverty. Her father exited the scene at an early age while her mother ran a brothel.
​
But Eleanor was feisty, and by 1664 her personality and attractive features secured her minor parts as an actress at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. She soon became one of the West End’s most popular actresses.

​

​

​
​
One night, while watching a performance at the Theatre Royal in 1668, Eleanor caught the attention of King Charles II. Despite her working-class background, she soon became his mistress. “Nell” Gwynn would remain so until the king’s death 340 years ago this Thursday, 6 February 1685.
​
Nell Gwynn died from complications of syphilis in 1687, aged 37.
​
*some historians question this date

Out of curiosity…
The future Queen Anne was the niece of King Charles II. Charles died on Anne’s 20th birthday, 360 years ago this Thursday, 6 February 1665.

Nesta Robert Marley was born 80 years ago this Thursday, 6 February 1945. He was born in Jamaica and left school early to become an apprentice welder. At the age of 18, Nesta formed a group originally called The Teenagers, soon to become known as The Wailers.
​
​Bob Marley would become the undisputed Kind of Reggae and cultural icon of Jamaica. He also became a significant voice for Rastafarians who believe in Jah and that Haile Selassie I, the former Ethiopian emperor, is the Messiah. They also believe in marijuana… and plenty of it.

​

​

​
​
Bob Marley’s hits included No Woman, No Cry, Could You Be Loved, Exodus, Buffalo Soldier and - my favourite - Redemption Song.
​
Bob Marley died from a rare skin cancer in 1981, aged 36.

​

​

By the Way

Cheesemaking has been practised since well before records began. Like many food origins, serendipity would have played its part in the discovery of cheese.
​
Paul Kindset, cheese scientist at the University of Vermont suggests that milk transported in animal stomachs would have curdled due to the natural enzymes in the skin. If that’s true, then hats off to the first cheese taster.
​
Fragments of pottery peppered with holes were found at Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland in 1857, identified as cheese-strainers by archaeologists.
​
The fragments are approximately 8,000 years old. This probably makes Switzerland the original home of cheesemaking.
​
The cheesemaking process remained largely unchanged for most of those 8,000 years. That is, up until 210 years ago tomorrow, 3 February 1815, when the world’s first commercial cheese factory opened in - of course - Switzerland.
​
The first factory-produced cheese was Emmental, the cheese with the holes.

​

​

​

​

​

Question of the Week

The films The Firm (Tom Cruise) and The Pelican Brief (Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington) are two box-office successes whose stories were adapted from novels by a former politician and trial lawyer.
​
Who was the author?

And Finally…

If you cast your mind back to school days, you might recall certain literary quotes etched in your memory. You may have no sense of their meaning, who wrote them or where they are taken from. But nonetheless, they are still there.
​
For me, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandius, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” is hard to shake off.
​
Similarly from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

​

​

There is one more piece of prose which, despite nearly a whole term studying, left me none-the-wiser. John Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn:

​

​

One of Keats’ influences when writing Ode on a Grecian Urn was a Roman glass vessel dating back to the time of Jesus Christ.
​
​The Portland Vase was discovered at the turn of the 16th century a few miles from Rome. It is remarkable for its rarity and underlying ” exceptional glassmaking craftsmanship”.
​
The vase was named after its owner, the 4th Duke of Portland, the Right Honourable MP for Petersfield, William Henry Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck.

​

​

​
​
From 1810, the vase was resident at the British Museum in London, safely protected inside a glass cabinet.
​
As it turned out… not so safely.
​
This Friday marks the 180th anniversary of the arrival at the museum mid-afternoon of William Mulcahy, a student from Dublin, 7 February 1845.
​
Mulcahy was approaching the end of a week-long drinking binge as he entered the British Museum. He teetered his way into the hall where the unsuspecting vase was situated. Without warning, Mulcahy grabbed a nearby exhibit and threw it at the glass cabinet.
​
The cabinet shattered, and the Portland Vase was smashed to smithereens. Having survived 1,840 years without a blemish, the priceless vase lay on the museum floor in pieces.
​
The irony of the story is that the 4th Duke of Portland had loaned the vase to the British Museum in 1810 for ‘safekeeping’.
​
Mulcahy pleaded poverty and escaped with a small fine. The Portland Vase went through a series of reconstructions, the most recent of which was in 1989.
​
The British Museum bought the vase from the 7th Duke of Portland in 1945, 100 years after the original incident. Well… it was the least it could do.

​

Spread the word...

If you've enjoyed this newsletter, please help me spread the word by forwarding it to a friend.

​

If you have received this newsletter from a friend and would like to receive your own weekly copy of The Breezer, then feel free to sign up here.

Thank you for joining me. Have a great week!

​

Steve

HOST & CHIEF STORY HUNTER

​

P:S: Incidentally, I am always keen to receive your feedback to help me continuously improve this newsletter and the podcast. Just hit reply to this email and...... let it rip! I respond to every email that I receive.

Question of the week… Answer

The author of The Firm and The Pelican Brief was John Grisham. Grisham has written 50 books since his first book, A Time to Kill was published in 1989. He is best known for his fast-paced legal thrillers.
​
John Grisham will be 70 years old this Saturday, 8 February 1955.
​
My go-to author throughout my life has been Robert Ludlum - espionage, complex plots, high-speed action…. and long.
​
Around 2012, I read my first John Grisham novel, though I’ve got no idea which one it was. It was a little disappointing. It would be another 13 years before I tried again.

​

​

​
​
Then, six weeks ago, I read The Street Lawyer and finished it in one sitting. Fantastic. I have since read The Rainmaker, The Broker, The Racketeer, The Pelican Brief and Camino Island. I can’t get enough of them.
​
I decided that my initial disappointment was due to reading it straight off the back of Robert Ludlum. By comparison with Ludlum, Grisham’s stories are light and simple. I bluffed myself that that meant ‘uninteresting’.
​
Having returned to John Grisham, I now appreciate his ability to tell a simple story with so much colour. The stories may not be complex but they are still great stories. Every sentence is an enjoyable read. Grisham finds humour in every situation and I have found myself smiling throughout, even the serious bits.
​
Thoroughly recommended. My pick of the above-mentioned books would be The Pelican Brief’.

​