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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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Albion
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Poetic name for England or Britain, of either Celtic or Roman origin (sometimes explained as deriving from albus, the Latin for white, because of the cliffs of Dover). It is mainly remembered now in the phrase 'perfidious Albion', in common use in France since the *Napoleonic Wars and first recorded in a poem of 1793 by Augustin, Marquis of Ximenez, which recommends attacking perfide Albion at sea. But a link in the French mind between perfidy and England is much older. In the 17C Bossuet even contrived to work the phrase perfide Angleterre into a sermon on the circumcision of Jesus.
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