I remember seeing Farleigh Castle as a teenager on an outing with my parents, but I have no memory of the anthropoid coffins! Perhaps they weren't on show back in the 1960s...

Almost two-thirds of the way through a re-read of Austen's 'Northanger Abbey' and finding much new of note that escaped me the first time around!

Gosh, I still haven't read my copy of this, hmm, why've I delayed...

Entirely apt! The arquebus, followed by the musket, had been around since the 15th century, and gunpowder and rudimentary cannons appeared in Europe from the mid 13th. And Don Quixote appeared a couple years after the Gunpowder Plot.

Lovely. I felt I could've quoted half the poems in this anthology, they were so evocative or affective.