If you’re interested in the origins of nursery rhymes, Karen Dolby’s Oranges and Lemons: Rhymes from Past Times is a fascinating and affordable book that won’t take you too long to read but that you’ll probably want to keep for years. It contains many of our most well-known traditional rhymes, and some which were new to me, following each rhyme with a paragraph about its origins. I bet you never knew that “One, two, three, four five,/Once I caught a fish alive,” was originally about a hare or that the roots of Old King Cole may date back to Roman times. And does Mary, Mary Quite Contrary refer to Mary Tudor or to the persecution of Roman Catholics by Henry VIII and Elizabeth I? You might also be interested to know that Wee Willie Winkie and Aiken Drum have Jacobite connections. Fascinating!