Jingo

45

“Stoolie” is sometimes an abbreviation for “stoolpigeon”, a police informant. Of course, a stool is also something you might find in an Ankh-Morpork street.

46

It has been pointed out — and I feel bound to inflict the thought on others — that Stoolie is technically a grassy gnoll. (And if that doesn't mean anything to you in the context of political assassinations — be thankful.)

47

A reference to the shampoo ‘Wash and Go’, a trademark of Vidal Sassoon.

48

Another reference to the shampoo ‘Wash and Go’, a trademark of Vidal Sassoon.

49

According to legend, Dis is also the name of a city in Hell — particularly appropriate to a demon-powered organiser.

50

One of the most intractable disputes in the early Christian church was over the nature of Christ — to what extent he was God or man. In 325, the Council of Nicea tried to settle the question with the Nicean Creed, but the dispute immediately re-emerged over a single word of the creed: one school said that it was “homoousios” (of one substance), the other that it should be “homoiousios” (of similar substance). The difference in the words is a single iota — the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet — and the schism (between Eastern and Western churches) continues to this day.

51

“Shaving” is a method of marking cards by trimming a very, very thin slice from one edge, perceptible only if you know what to look for.

52

Caliph was the title of the leader of the Muslim world, from the death of the Prophet in 632 onward; although the title has been divided and weakened since the 10th century, it was only officially abolished by the newly-formed Republic of Turkey as recently as 1924.

53

Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (1780–1831), a Prussian general who fought against Napoleon, wrote a standard textbook On War (Vom Kriege, first published 1833), in which he said that “war is simply a continuation of political intercourse, with the addition of other means”. If you want to understand Lord Rust's mindset as expressed by someone with a working brain, read Clausewitz.

54

When Jingo was being written, there was much speculation about whether “mad cow disease” had first been transmitted from sheep to cattle, and whether it could be transmitted from cattle to humans. Both ideas are now widely accepted.

55

Many British army regiments have, or had, nicknames of this sort, based either on some historical event or on some idiosyncrasy of their uniforms. The marching song is a famous old tongue-twister: “I'm not a pheasant plucker, I'm a pheasant plucker's mate/ I'm only plucking pheasants since the pheasant plucker's late.” (Another variant substitutes “son/come” for “mate/late”.)

56

Apparently there are “well-documented” cases of this sort of miraculous escape, but it has become a much- parodied staple of Boys' Own-style fiction. One well-known occurrence comes at the very end of the Blackadder III television series. Another can be found in the 1975 movie The Man Who Would Be King, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.

57

Medieval Arab legend identifies the source of the Nile as being in “the Mountains of the Moon”.