Inigo Thomas

Following last week’s floods in the city and province of Valencia in eastern Spain, a spectacular blame game began between the authorities in Madrid and the regional government of Valencia. It had to be someone else’s fault that the southern suburbs of Valencia flooded so badly.

The dining table at the Spanish embassy in Belgrave Square is 13.5 metres long and seats fifty people. It’s said to be the largest table (without leaves) in London. No. 24 Belgrave Square, once Downshire House, was acquired by the Spanish government in 1928. The table came with the house. The previous owner was William Pirrie, the 1st Viscount Pirrie, chairman of the shipbuilders Harland & Wolff and a one-time mayor of Belfast. It was in the dining-room of Downshire House in 1907 that Pirrie and Bruce Ismay, the managing director of the White Star Line, conceived their idea for three vast new ocean liners, the Olympic, the Britannic and the Titanic.

Old Man Texas was a character invented by the Dallas Morning News cartoonist John Knott in 1906. He looked like a cowboy, a figure out of the Old West. He wore a ten-gallon hat over thick, flowing hair. He had a windswept moustache and wore leather boots. Knott was an Austrian who had arrived in Dallas via Sioux City.

In the last week of October the digital dimension of the entire British Library vanished. Just like that. No catalogue, no internet, no way to buy a pencil at the gift shop by card. An early tweet reported ‘technical issues’; a few days later the library said it had been subject to a cyber attack.