My husband bought the Hark, a Vagrant! book recently and insisted I read it too. I'm so glad he did. Not only is it great to read funny things from someone who is also mystified by the "sex sells history" trend (and shares my love of early political cartoons), it's fun…
"Well now, history is not just the tale of the victors," he said, "It's the tale of the privileged. The men in the mud of the battlefield didn't leave much of a story behind, and the stories they did tell were mostly ignored or forgotten." - A Desperate Fortune, Susanna Kearsley.…
Last month, my husband and I spent a couple of weeks visiting family in Finland and Germany. The historical site we were both most excited to see was Turku Castle, in southwest Finland. Turku was the capital of Finland until 1812, when Alexander I, thinking Turku was a little too close to…
Many buildings outside London had thatched roofs of reed or straw, and in January 1784 Woodforde noted: 'I rejoiced much this morning on shooting an old wood-pecker, which had teised [teased] me a long time in pulling out the reed from my house. He had been often shot at by…
We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things . . . but such things as these were gathered from the letters of merchants and others who corresponded abroad, and from them was handed about by word of mouth only; so…
