Wandering round the website of the College of Arms for another purpose entirely, I discover that Lloyd Grossman has received a Grant of Arms. Rather charmingly, Lloyd pays tribute to his Marblehead birthplace by adopting as his badge a silver New England lobster buoy on a rope of gold (in heraldspeak "Buoy Argent the rope rising on either side and there looped outwards Or").Other recent grants of arms include such maritime fancies as a merelephant (for Professor S.W. Haines) and lions holding lymphads, a word in Scottish heraldry for a galley with a single mast (for Lord Butler of Brockwell).
Heralds are unrepentant punsters, though they call them rebuses. Lord Butler of Brockwell's coat of arms has a badger emerging from a well, for example, and Sir George Martin, who is most famous as the Beatles' producer, has three golden beetles on his shield.
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