Olympic oddities: Music, poetry, and town planning

If there ever is a posthumous Olympic medal awarded for intransigence, then the ghost of David George Brownlow Cecil Burghley, sixth marquess of Exeter, gold medal winner at the 1928 Olympics and chairman of the organising and executive committees of the 1948 London Games, will surely float on the podium.

“I must point out to you that the International Olympic Committee have laid down that a country should be named by that which it is known in the host country. For instance, Spain appears as Spain, not España. Your country is known as Éire.”

Thus it was that Ireland’s team of competitors, still widely regarded in Britain as Free-staters, had to go under a banner reading “Éire” rather than calling themselves “Ireland” at the opening ceremony of the XIV Olympiad.