This German ‘war’ lasted in the right-wing English press for a full decade – almost twice as long as the actual war of which it was a hallucinatory reprise. The War of Cordelia’s Burger was fought mostly through journalistic hyperventilation. ‘A small Somerset town finds itself at war with Germany’ is the headline on a 1996 report in the Daily Express that representatives from the Bavarian town of Immenstadt had asked not to be served British beef at a ceremony in Wellington to mark the twinning of the two towns.
