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in Korcula, Dalmatia, in 1254, then a protectorate of Venice.
    We shall probably never know whether he really went to the Far East as a seventeen-year-old with his merchant uncles or if he simply recorded the tales of Silk Road traders who stopped off at their Black Sea trading post.
    What is certain is that his famous book of travels was largely the work of a romance writer called Rustichello da Pisa with whom he shared a cell after being captured by the Genoans in 1296. Polo dictated it; Rustichello wrote it in French, a language Polo didn’t speak.
    The result, which appeared in 1306, was designed to entertain, and it became a best-seller in the era before printing. As an accurate history its status is less secure.
    Its original title was Il Milione – ‘the Million’ – for reasons that are now obscure, although it quickly became nicknamed ‘the million lies’, and Polo – now a rich and successful merchant – was known as ‘Mr Million’. It was probably just a catchy thirteenth-century version of a title like ‘Wonder Book of Wonders’. No original manuscripts survive.
    Marco Polo is also supposed to have brought pasta and ice cream to Italy.
    In fact, pasta was known in Arab countries in the ninth century and dried macaroni is mentioned in Genoa in 1279, twenty-five years before Polo claimed to have returned. According to the food historian Alan Davidson, the myth itself only dates back as far as 1929 when it was mentioned in an American pasta-trade journal.
    Ice cream may well be a Chinese invention but it seems unlikely to have been introduced to the West by Polo, as itdoesn’t get mentioned again until the middle of the seventeenth century.
    PHILL A lot of people thought he was a Dalmatian. He was actually Irish. He was Marc O’Polo !
     

 

     

What is Croatia’s most lasting contribution to world business?
     
    The neck tie.
    Hravat is the Croatian word for ‘Croat’ and it’s where we get the word ‘cravat’ from. So, Croatia means ‘tie-land’.
    In the seventeenth century Louis XIII of France kept a regiment of Croatian mercenaries during the Thirty Years War. Part of their uniform was a broad, brightly coloured neckcloth by which they became known. The flamboyant yet practical style became very popular in Paris, where military dress was much admired.
    During the reign of Louis XIV, the cravat was replaced by a more restrained military Steinkirk , tied about the neck in a loose knot, but it wasn’t until the reintroduction of the flowing cravat by dandies (or ‘ macaroni ’ as they were then known) in the late eighteenth century that individual styles of tying them became popular, the generic name then changing to ‘tie’.
    The relentless march of the tie through the twentieth century has made it the dress item de rigeur for men in all but the most casual of businesses. Bremer Communication, a US image consultancy, has divided the now ubiquitous ‘business casual’ into three levels: basic, standard, and executive. Only at the basic level is a tie not required, and they recommend thatthis is best restricted to ‘those days when you have little customer contact or are taking part in an informal activity’.
    In the late 1990s, two researchers at Cambridge University used mathematical modelling to discover that it is topologically possible to tie eighty-five different knots with a conventional tie. They found that, in addition to the four well-known knots, six other knots produced aesthetically pleasing results.
    STEPHEN My prep school tailors were called Gorringe, funnily enough.
    SEAN ‘Which … which side does young Sir dress on?’
    BILL ‘Would Sir like to wear a cravat on the cross-country run?’
     

Who introduced tobacco and potatoes to England?
     
     

    It’s not who you think it is.
    Walter Raleigh, poet, courtier, explorer and Renaissance man, is a perfect example of how popular myths attach themselves to attractive characters. His fame now rests almost entirely on