Famous Norfolk Quotes

Nelson is glad to see a handler and her dog coming towards him. The recognises the woman as Jan Adams, famous in Norfolk for having won several medals for bravery. Her dog, a beautiful long-haired German Shepherd is a bit of a celebrity too. What was his name again? "Barney" says Jan in answer to his question. "What's going on?" Nelson explains about the attack. Barney looks at him, head on one side, as if her too might be about to ask a question.

By the time of Mary’s second French betrothal, Henry was already beginning to doubt the validity and the usefulness of his marriage to Catherine and considering the possibility of annulment. At least in Henry’s eyes, Catherine had failed him by having no sons, and Henry had lost interest in her. Instead, he was interested in a certain France-returned coquettish aristocratic courtier descended from the powerful Howards of Norfolk (the incumbent Duke’s niece), Anne Boleyn. Try as he might, Henry could not get Anne to become his mistress, but she did agree to become his Queen consort, famously telling him, “I beseech your highness most earnestly to desist, and to this my answer in good part. I would rather lose my life than my honesty”.

Waiting in the Hackney Mortuary parking lot was a Fordson BBE van, with two seats in front, fitted with a customized V-8 engine. At the wheel was a small man with a neat mustache, wearing civilian clothes. His name was St. John “Jock” Horsfall, an MI5 chauffeur who also happened to be one of the most famous racing drivers in the country. St. John Ratcliffe Stewart Horsfall was born in 1910 into a Norfolk family of car fanatics: he acquired his first Aston Martin at the age of twenty-three. Between 1933 and the outbreak of war, he won trophy after trophy on the racing circuit. In 1938, Jock Horsfall took on six BMWs at Donington Park in the Black Car, his two-liter Speed Model Aston Martin, and beat them all. He seldom wore racing leathers or a crash helmet, preferring to race in “a shirt and tie,16 with either a bomber jacket or a sleeveless sweater.” Horsfall was shortsighted and astigmatic but declined to wear spectacles. He drove at staggering speed and suffered a number of serious accidents, including one in a trial run at Brooklands when his car, according to one eyewitness, “went berserk17 [and] tried to hurl itself over the top of the banking.” On another occasion, the throttle stuck open, forcing the engine up to 10,000 rpm until the clutch exploded, sending “potentially lethal pieces of metal”18 bursting through the bell housing at his feet.