Uncle Toby’s hobby horse (his dada) was the re-enactment of the Siege of Namur where he received the wound to his groin. Sterne tells us he used the Shandy Hall bowling green to do this. The bowling green looked like this a couple of years ago

I never quite understood why such a gentle man would spend so much time blowing up his brother’s back garden, but on Sunday I went to the Invalides (the military museum in Paris) It has a couple of rooms full of miniature cannon and toy soldiers. The labels tell me, rather didactically that the cannon are not toys. They are scale models or prestige gifts for nobilility.

Maybe. But if had some of these (and a garden) I’d be shooting them until the gendarmerie took me away.

The toy soldiers are just toys, or, if they were mine- cannon fodder!

Uncle Toby’s battlefield can be seen at Laurence Sterne’s house my favourite of all the writer’s houses I’ve visited