Leaded petrol was phased out in the course of the 1990s.

Here was my chance. I took the old man aside, and two or three glasses of Old Crow launched him into reminiscence.

One of these [posters], When in Doubt, Take the Underground (1913), depicts a dazed, Chaplinesque man consulting his watch and looking perplexed. Well, he would look perplexed - he hasn't yet noticed the light of the Underground station sign behind him.

A death, a drought ascribable to the sorcery of a weathermaker, a cyclone and so forth could always excite the natives to acts of revenge, and consequently no man could leave his district unarmed […]