WDYTYA? TV series

I enjoyed the Charles Dance episode, but there were some inaccuracies.

One of the genealogists on the show, commenting on a very large order placed for some artists’ materials, said “three gross, or 60”. She is probably too young to know that a “gross” is actually 144, so the order would have been for 432 items! She must have been thinking of a “score”, which is 20.

It was stated that Charles Dance’s family had to leave Spa, Belgium and go to England because of the conflict and disruption in about 1789. Spa is now in Belgium, but Belgium was created as late as 1830. In the late 1780s Spa was part of the Austrian Empire, although it was invaded by Napoleon for France in 1792.

A lot of research goes into these programmes, but it is just a pity that some of the basic facts are not subject to equally rigorous checks. Geoffrey Searle by email Editor replies: We contacted Wall to Wall, the producers of the TV series, and this was their response: 1. Unfortunately our expert did make an error about the quantity of artists’ materials ordered. We do our best to be accurate but we cannot always correct expert opinion recorded on location. 2. In the late 18th century the European theatre was in flux due to a protracted period of warfare and, while Belgium did not become an independent state until 1830, the Austrian Empire also did not come into existence until 1806, and independent Austria until 1919. As a result, for ease of understanding, we referred to Spa as being in modern- day Belgium. Given the many different names the area was called in the past, this seemed like the clearest option.