Strange Timing & Motive In Polanski Arrest

[Jan Klimkowski]

Bejeezus, Helen, it seems that you're correct.

Bovril is the trademarked name of a thick, salty meat extract, developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston and sold in a distinctive, bulbous jar. It is made in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire and distributed by Unilever UK.

Bovril can be made into a drink by diluting with hot water, or (less commonly) milk[1]. It can also be used as a flavouring for soups, stews or porridge, or spread on bread, especially toast, rather like Marmite.

The first part of the product's name comes from Latin bos (genitive bovis) meaning "ox" or "cow". Johnston took the -vril suffix from Bulwer-Lytton's then-popular 1870 "lost race" novel The Coming Race, whose plot revolves around a powerful energy fluid named "Vril".[2][3]

In the year 1870, in the war against the Prussians, Napoleon III found that his armies could not 'march on empty stomachs'. He therefore ordered one million cans of beef to feed his starving troops. The task of providing all this beef went to a Scotsman named John Lawson Johnston. Unfortunately, Britain did not have a large enough quantity of beef to meet the French people's and Napoleon III's demand, so Johnston created a product known as 'Johnston's Fluid Beef' -- later called Bovril.[4]

By the year 1888, in excess of 3000 British public houses, grocers and chemists were beginning to sell Bovril. In 1889, the Bovril Company was formed. 1966 saw the beginnings of Bovril's instant beef stock, followed by the 'King Beef' range of instant flavours for stews, casseroles and gravy in 1971.

During the Siege of Ladysmith in the Second Boer War a Bovril-like paste was produced from horse meat. Named Chevril by replacing the Bov (ox) with Chev (horse) in the Bovril name, it was produced by boiling down the horse meat to a jelly paste and serving it like beef tea.[5][6] Bovril continued to function as a "war food" in World War I,[7] and was frequently mentioned in the 1930 account "Not So Quiet... Stepdaughters of War" by Helen Zenna Smith (Evadne Price). As a drink mixing the beef-flavouring with hot water, it helped sustain ambulance drivers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovril