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WILLIAM FRITH: THE PEOPLE'S PAINTER by Penny Dolan
By the time this History Girls post appears, a major and comprehensive bicentennial exhibition - WILLIAM FRITH: THE PEOPLE'S PAINTER - will just have opened at the Mercer Gallery in Harrogate, North...
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Bread and Roses - Celia Rees
Lauren Laverne's guest on Desert Island Discs (BBC Radio 4) last week was Professor Monica McWilliams. In 1996, she helped to found, with Pearl Sagar and others, the Northern Ireland Women’s...
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Representing Rome by L.J. Trafford
My post this month is inspired, in part, by a happening on a Roman Facebook group. A member had posted an Edwardian painting of a female Roman slave and this set off quite a debate. One poster had...
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Mediaeval food, feast and famine by Carolyn Hughes
In my novels of 14th century England, like many other writers, I try to include a good deal of description of medieval daily life. Clothing, housing, furniture and furnishings, artefacts and tools,...
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Feminine Power by Elisabeth Storrs
The Vestal Virgins of Rome are famous. These six priestesses were entrusted with keeping alight the eternal flame of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth. The College of Vestals wielded great influence in...
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Wedding Lintels & Marriage Customs by Catherine Hokin
Marriage Lintel from 1610, FalklandI have developed a couple of new obsessions since moving to Scotland six years ago, not all of which revolve around whisky. Moody looking castles are up there, as is...
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A Victorian Scandal: The Peer and the Dancer by Judith Allnatt
In 1851, the Spanish dancer Josefa Duran, known as ‘Pepita’ caught the eye of Lionel Sackville-West, a member of the British aristocracy (2nd Baron Sackville). She was slim and beautiful and was known...
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AN INTERESTING FIND IN CHEPSTOW By Elizabeth Chadwick.
Chepstow Castle from my hotel window.Last week I was in Chepstow to give a talk on my specialist subject, the life of the great Medieval knight, magnate and regent, William Marshal.Since it was an...
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Emanuel Swedenborg and William Blake by Miranda Miller
For years I’ve passed Swedenborg House in central London but haven’t dared to go in. The reason for my curiosity is because ever since adolescence I’ve loved the paintings, illustrated books and...
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The Eiffel Tower celebrates 130 years, by Carol Drinkwater
Sunrise seen from the Eiffel TowerThis year in France, our very own Iron Lady has reached her 130th birthday. Le Tour Eiffel. Receiving close to 7 million visitors a year, it is the most visited...
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Greyhound Racing by Janie Hampton
I had laid my bet on a shiny, black bitch called Millicent Magic. She had previously been beaten by Jet Stream Smurf and Boherduff Solas, and that night she ran against Boom Boom Love and Smoothappa...
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Rooted out, destroyed and abolished? From the Inquisition to a cosy English...
“These poisonous growths in the church of God must be torn up by the roots lest they spread themselves further.” - Pope Urban VIII Mary Ward’s idea for a female religious order inspired by the Jesuits...
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Finding the Story from the Research by Helen Peters
Our June guest is Helen Peters.Helen Peters grew up on an old-fashioned farm in Sussex, surrounded by family, animals and mud. She spent most of her childhood reading stories and putting on plays in a...
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To win a copy of Helen Peters' Anna at War, just answer the following question in the Comment section:"Towards the end of Anna at War, Anna has a very dramatic encounter with Winston Churchill. If you...
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The Warlow Experiment review by Mary Hoffman
It's not often you get a Press Release for a book, with a quotation from Hilary Mantel. Here it is in full:"Alix Nathan cuts against cliché, against the received version, against cosiness. She leaves...
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Reading historical fiction, by Gillian Polack
The interesting papers of colonial Australia have to wait a bit for my life is suddenly full of the relationship between fiction and history. I’m teaching it, in fact, and am embedded in reading things...
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‘Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years’ - Review by Katherine Langrish
I want to sing the praises of an absolutely wonderful book: ‘Women’s Work, The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth and Society in EarlyTimes,’ by Elizabeth Wayland Barber (Norton, 1998). It’s about the...
View ArticleLog Driver's Waltz - Joan Lennon
The Log Driver's Waltz was one of a series of short films made by the Canadian Film Board to use as "interstitial programming" - in other words, to tuck in between other TV programmes to make the...
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Pennies From Heaven -- A Historical Fiction Workshop
As readers of this blog may know, I love ephemera. I also hate clutter, so my bits and pieces have to work hard to justify their continued existence in my house and life. This week, a box of photos,...
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WELSH LANDSCAPES. Part 1. Parys Mountain. by Adèle Geras
In the 18th and early 19th century, copper was used to sheath the hulls of wooden ships (copper bottomed) and in 1768, a local miner called Roland Puw was present as a great mass of copper was...
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