The empire on which the sun never sets at the present time." In 1821, the "Caledonian Mercury" wrote of the British Empire, "On her dominions the sun never sets; before his evening rays leave the spires of Quebec, his morning beams have shone three hours on Port Jackson, and while sinking from the waters of Lake Superior, his eye opens upon the Mouth of the Ganges." Daniel Webster famously expressed a similar idea in 1834: "A power which has dotted over the surface of the whole globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drumbeat, following the sun and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth
The Message to the Planet The Message to the Planet The Message to the Planet is a novel by Iris Murdoch. Published in 1989, it was her twenty-fourth novel. "The Message to the Planet" centres on Marcus Vallar, a charismatic former mathematician and painter who has abandoned both these pursuits, and on a group of London friends, former associates of Vallar, with whom he has broken off contact. The plot begins with the decision of Alfred Ludens, a young history professor, to seek out his former mentor Vallar in the hope that he can restore his friend Patrick Fenman to health. Fenman is apparently dying