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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Bovril
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Trade name of a concentrated extract of beef, the basis for a hot drink but also used as a flavouring or for gravy. It derived from a product pioneered in Canada in 1873 by a Scotsman, John Johnson, and sold as 'Johnson's Fluid Beef'. He launched it in Britain in the 1880s under a new name based on the Latin for a cow (bos, bovis) plus the word vril – a magic force (described as the 'unity in natural energic agencies') which had featured in a novel of 1871, The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. A very successful advertising campaign later recommended Bovril to avoid 'that sinking feeling'.
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