Peter: As every schoolchild knows–or at any rate knew, before Maya

Angelou took over from Keats–it wasn’t “stout Cortez” who stood on that

peak in Darien, but much more likely Balboa. I have often idly

wondered–too idly to be bothered researching it–whether Cortez really was

stout, or whether Keats was just putting in words to fit. If Cortez was an

ectomorph, then there are two errors in two words, some sort of literary

record, putting it up there with that well-known passage in Timon of Athens where there are about four gross errors of fact in as many lines.