Men at Arms: A Discworld Novel:15

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Page 98 - The Duke of Eorle is a play on the classic 1962 doo-wop hit by Gene Chandler, Duke of Earl. Brandon Sanderson has described it as "funny in a clever, scholarly, satire sort of way", with "excellent pacing" and "irresistible" characters. Page 64 - "Capability Brown, Sagacity Smith, Intuition De Vere Slade-Gore" Lancelot 'Capability' Brown (1715-1783) actually existed, and was a well known landscape gardener and architect. Flint is a a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, Moraine is the rock debris left behind when a glacier retreats.

Only Pratchett would play with the concept of a werewolf's natural tendency toward blood and killing being secondary to the werewolf's human nature - in this case a vegetarian - which would make meal time in wolf form a problem. Palm and the Guild of Seamstresses were trying to persuade the Patrician to rename the area The Street of Negotiable affection. Page 272 - "'I thought you rolled around on the floor grunting and growing hair and stretching,' he whimpered.His nickname derived from his frequent statement to prospective employers that their estates held great "capabilities". Page 31 - In Sergeant Colon's speech and procedures as he trains the new watch, Pratchett pokes fun at the similar trend in Roundworld on procedure over actual actions - talking about it rather than doing it. This is not surprising given the fact that his ancestor led 600 men (the same number as in the Charge of the Light Brigade) to glorious defeat at the Battle of Quirm. Secret rooms were common in medieval castles as a way of hiding from attackers and also spying on guests. by feeding a random text generating program with a Chinese takeaway menu (shrimp) and the lyrics to the They Might be Giants song, " Particle Man" (Millennium hand) .

Page 198 - In response to Vimes agonizing that it has all been a waste of time, Carrot says, "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness.And the line is also the common movie pickup line where the woman is changing into something more suitable for the evenings activities, like a flimsy negligee easily removed. For non-British readers, BritRail was the national railway system that was privatized in the 1990s by the Conservative government. As well as being a play on Detritus' helmet fan and a clockwork soldier being a toy that would be in a child's model army, this is also a reference to the New Model Army. Page 246 - Gaspode says, "There's rats along there that'll make your hair stand on--" Gaspode is a terrier type dog and they were originally bred to catch and kill rats. See annotation on Page 115 for explanation of Trolls counting in base 4 when they have not been taught the other numbers like 8, 16 and 29.