Worm Casts

Worm-casts are as much a sign of spring as the blossom is.

I go round kicking them in the hope of finding some fragment of archaeology in the scatter- a nugget of pot, a shard of flint. No luck yet, but maybe this afternoon...

The White Company: Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Nigel Loring is a famous, battle-hardened condottiere and as unworldly as Mr Pickwick.  He leads his band of thieving, murdering scum (but hearts of oak, really) on a mission that gets most of them killed but from which he escapes without the least diminution of his self-belief. And, no, it's not a satire on the officer class but an example of the kind of literature that sent tens of thousands of young men into battle in 1914 thinking they were going to have fun.

Would we remember Doyle if it weren't for Sherlock Holmes? Almost certainly not.