Early and small

No meaningful post this week, I'm afraid. This weekend has been, in many regards, the worst of my life thus far. I've never been more anxious and fraught with aches. Try as I might, I can't look upon my situation, self-wrought as it substantially is, with any sort of Chestertonian cheerfulness, and must rather resign myself to the fact that though the illness was not my doing, the pile of work was. I ask for your prayers regardless, though I caution you that any prayers for healing should be coupled with fervent wishes that I straighten myself out.

Anyway, here's something that may interest the Shavians among our readership.

An obscure short play by George Bernard Shaw directly influenced the handling of Britain's abdication crisis, research shows.

The playlet, written 70 years ago, is said to have been brought to the attention of Edward VIII by Winston Churchill who suggested the King emulate the actions of Shaw's fictitious monarch.

In Shaw's drama The King, the Constitution and the Lady, a king takes on the twin establishments of church and polity to marry his twice-divorced American mistress Daisy Bell.

The playlet is based on The Apple Cart, an earlier Shaw comedy, in which King Magnus is pressured by his mistress to marry her but faces opposition from his prime minister on constitutional grounds.

[It continues in some detail]

At times like this, of course, one can only bellow "Shaw!" and shake one's fist.