Department of Peevish Pedantry

A small series:

1. I was annoyed but not surprised when Barack Obama referred to Westminster as “The Mother of Parliaments” on Wednesday. This was not a surprising error for a foreigner even if his speechwriter should have been expected to know and do better. It is England that is the Mother of Parliaments, not Westminster. (Though the Icelanders have a legitimate grievance about this.) If Obama, being a poor foreigner, can be forgiven this what is Amanda Foreman’s excuse? I’d have thought an “historian” would know better but there she was on the BBC’s This Week making the same ignorant blunder. Not good enough.

2. Canute. A long-standing peeve. Canute did not think he could order the tide to recede; he ordered it to recede to show his courtiers that he could not command the ocean. It was a demonstration of modesty, not presumptious arrogance. One day or in a better world Canute will be rescued and given the Coolidgesque approval he deserves.