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A delicate exotic fruit.....by Adèle Geras
Lady Bracknell said it, in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. "Ignorance, " she pronounced "is a delicate exotic fruit. Touch it, and the bloom is gone."I am aware that many writers on this blog...
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'The Cockerel that Whistled' by Karen Maitland
I recently visited the stunning parish church in Ottery St Mary in Devon, birthplace of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The church is like a miniature cathedral with one of the oldest working astrological...
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Crossing the Threshold by Caroline Lawrence
As he moved towards the mist of the fountains, Langdon had the uneasy sense he was crossing an imaginary threshold into another world. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code p 37Crossing the Threshold in The...
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September competition winner:Elizabeth Chadwick had a hard time picking a winner but has chosen Suzanne's entry. Could Suzanne please get in touch with me on: readers@maryhoffman.co.uk you that I can...
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Thoughts on monstrosity - Michelle Lovric
I’ve written before about the Natural History Museum in Venice, quite recently reopened after decades of restoration. I’ve recorded how, among all the state-of-the-art graphics, tools and devices, the...
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What Did We Ever Do For the Russians? asks Laurie Graham
As anyone who has been in London recently must know, the city has become a Mecca for wealthy Russians. They want the best of British for themselves and their children, and not for the first time in...
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Home Fires by Tanya Landman
For me history’s appeal doesn’t lie in the grand sweep of events. I’m not particularly interested in kings and politicians, or empires rising and falling. It’s the small things, the ordinary people...
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Being Heard: From Pamphleteers to Twitter Trolls – Elizabeth Fremantle
Twitter Trolls are a twenty-first century phenomenon and one that exposes the darkness that lurks beneath the surface of society. I am always shocked to hear of the venomous attacks launched on people...
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Bodleian Ballads Online Catherine Johnson
This post really is just a puff for the wonderful Bodleian Broadside Ballad collection. My site of the month. It's here, go on waste all morning. There's stuff here from the sixteenth century to the...
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Childhood in the Past
A few things have made me reflect on the concept of childhood in the last few days, so I thought I'd muse a little here.I'm aware that childhood in its present form in Western industrialised society is...
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The Alhambra: by Sue Purkiss
Last month I wrote about our trip to the Alpujarra, in southern Spain. You can read about it here. The Alpujarra is a region of the Sierra Nevada, and by the nature of mountainous regions, it's not...
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POWDER - AND A PICTURESQUE PASSION by Penny Dolan
A couple of weeks ago, away in Llangollen, I came across an interesting answer to one of those questions that sits in the back of your mind: “How exactly did they do that, then?”I was at Plas Newydd,...
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Sarah Waters - Celia Rees
Last week, I went to see Sarah Waters at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. I was there purely as a punter, a fan, no magic access to the Green Room this time. Just like any other reader, I like to go...
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The Irresistible Charm of the English Murder by Christina Koning
‘Extraordinary how potent cheap music is,’ says Amanda in Private Lives. The same might be said of fiction – at least of a certain sort of ‘cheap’ fiction, variously known as the thriller, the murder...
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BETRAYED, FORGOTTEN AND REVILED: The Lost Women of the Bible by Ann Swinfen
It is a truism that history is written by the victors.Western history and culture have their roots deep in the Judaeo-Graeco-Roman tradition, and it is a strongly patriarchal tradition. Archaeological...
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Ghosts on the Walls by Imogen Robertson
I have a thing about medieval wall paintings. That probably wont come as a great surprise to you. I also have a thing about the medieval marginalia as regularly tweeted by Medieval Manuscripts and...
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Beauty and the Beast by Kate Lord Brown
Today I have a puzzle for the HGs. I was recently asked to interview the curator of a new show at the Museum of Islamic Art here in Doha. 'The Tiger's Dream: Tipu Sultan' explores the life of the south...
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HOW TO REMEMBER THEM? by Leslie Wilson (contains an image which may cause...
I received this cardboard poppy in the unsolicited post in late September, from the British Legion. It invited me to write a message on it, so it could be placed in Flanders Field to 'remember with...
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GUESS WHO - or the debate over the Radegonde mural in Chinon. By Elizabeth...
In 1964 an interesting an intriguing discovery was made at an ancient chapel in Chinon dedicated to St Radegonde. The story goes that a piece of plaster fell off the wall and revealed a mural of five...
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SEX AND MONEY AGAIN by Eleanor Updale
A few months ago I was on about the great 19th century cad, Henry Cust, who lived high on the hog, and is said to have left descendants in cradles all over upper-class England. Well, it turns out that...
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