A friend of my husband’s, yet a well-educated man, said in conversation as we walked to Tate Modern: ‘Is that the crest of the City of London?’
It wasn’t just the crest, but the coat of arms of the City, the whole achievement, with shield and supporters and motto and crest and all. What is it about heraldry that makes most people unrepentantly misuse a term such as crest?
It is partly that heraldry demands a completely new vocabulary, in which or means ‘gold’, proper means ‘as in nature’ and sinister means ‘the right-hand side of the shield’ (the left, of course, for the man carrying it).
But I think two other factors make the language of heraldry unpopular: it is completely useless, and its chief practitioners seem mannered, snobbish and stuck with at least one foot firmly on the autistic spectrum.
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