So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one that gives me free tape and prompt s… - Bill Bryson

Durham Cathedral, like all great buildings of antiquity, is essentially just a giant pile of rubble held in place by two thin layers of dressed stone. But — and here is the truly remarkable thing — because that gloopy mortar was contained between two impermeable outer layers, air couldn’t get to it, so it took a very long time — forty years to be precise — to dry out. As it dried, the whole structure gently settled, which meant that the cathedral masons had to build doorjambs, lintels, and the like at slightly acute angles so that they would ease over time into the correct alignments. And that’s exactly what happened. After forty years of slow-motion sagging, the building settled into a position of impeccable horizontality, which it has maintained ever since. To me, that is just amazing — the idea that people would have the foresight and dedication to ensure a perfection that they themselves might never live to see.

Only one man had the circumstances and gifts to give us such incomparable works, and William Shakespeare of Stratfrod was unquestionably that man — whoever he was.

He hit the water—impacted really is the word for it—at over six hundred miles an hour, with a report so loud that it made birds fly out of trees up to three miles away. At such a speed water effectively becomes a solid. I don’t believe Mr. Milton penetrated it at all, but just bounced off it about fifteen feet, limbs suddenly very loose, and then lay on top of it, still, like an autumn leaf, spinning gently.