On this day in 1881 the writer and historian Thomas Carlyle died in London.
Carlyle was a great student of the German "Sturm und Drang" school of romantic literature and was convinced that nations needed a strong leader. His best known work, On Heroes and Hero Worship, is deeply concerned with this idea. Carlyle's influence waned in the 20th Century, as his ideas were often seen as foreshadowing the totalitarianism prevalent at the time. In fact, it is reputed that, during the last months of the Second World War, Joseph Goebbels read Carlyle's history of Frederick II of Prussia to Hitler.
John Boyd Dunlop, who patented the first practical pneumatic tyre, was born in Ayrshire on February 5 1846. He worked as a veterinary surgeon in Edinburgh for almost a decade before moving to Ireland. He found the rough roads and the solid wheels an uncomfortable way of travelling. Having experimented with his son's tricycle, he came up with a design based on an inflated rubber tube and patented it the following year. This was not the first time someone had tried this. Another Scot, Robert Thomson had patented the idea in 1845. He established what would become the Dunlop Rubber Company but had to fight and win a legal battle with Thomson. Dunlop retired to Dublin and died there in 1921.
Today's recipe: a creamy fish soup from Morayshire. .
