Whilst reading Jamaica Inn, Daphne Du Maurier’s tale of smugglers on Cornwall’s Bodmin Moor, recently I was interested to find two references to mistletoe at Christmas, seemingly suggesting that its usage was commonplace at the time and place the novel is set. That time was not precisely stated by Du Maurier but was, according to her opening note about the 1935 book, ‘over a hundred and twenty years ago’. That would make it before 1815. […]