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MAGNA CARTA By DAN JONES: Some thoughts from Elizabeth Chadwick
Front cover June 2015 sees the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta at Runnymede and in this book Dan Jones presents a useful guide to bring the general reader up to speed. Dan Jones is of...
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A HUNGRY CHRISTMAS By Eleanor Updale
Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope you are enjoying a stupendous feast today. Of course, this year -perhaps more than most - people are going hungry because of sickness or conflict. So I thought I’d...
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All Quiet on the Western Front - Christmas 1914, by Carol Drinkwater
On Christmas Eve 1914 in northern France a frost set in. It had been raining for weeks, filling the trenches to waist height with water, soaking spirits, drowning hope. So acute was this drop in...
View ArticleDecember Stillness, by Siegfried Sassoon - Louisa Young
These quiet days, between one set of sparkliness and another, are one of my favourite times of year. Nothing showy for you today, just this, sent by a friend when my mother died, four weeks...
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Blue Plaque-tastic! by Clare Mulley
This week I was thrilled to learn that Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the first woman to work for Britain as a special agent during the Second World War, and the subject of my last...
View ArticleThe History Girls: Blue Plaque-tastic! by Clare Mulley
The History Girls: Blue Plaque-tastic! by Clare Mulley: This week I was thrilled to learn that Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the first woman to work for Britain as a special...
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Magna Carta
We are delighted that this month’s guest post on The History Girls comes courtesy of Dr. Dan Jones author of The Plantagenets and presenter of the recent Channel 5 series about them called "Britain's...
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The Cabinet of Curiosities: The Human Heart - Louisa Young
My proposal for the Cabinet of Curiosities is one of the most curious items I have ever come across: the human heart. We all have one; most of us will never see one. We all know what it is, very few of...
View ArticleDecember competition
Our competitions are open to UK readers only - sorry!To win one of five copies of Dan Jones' Magna Carta book, just write your answer to this question in the Comments box below:"If you were designing a...
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History Girls Old and New or the Great History Cake-off by Mary Hoffman
We thought it was time to update the photo on the About Us Page, because there have been a lot of comings and goings in the History Girls since we began this blog three and a half years ago. We have...
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William of Orange - by Gillian Polack
I promised you a touch of romance and some stories. The story begins, of course, with 'Once upon a time...'Once upon a time, a teenager fell in love with a character in a series of stories. Being a...
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Bikes, Bars, and Bloomers, by Y S Lee
Living in southeastern Ontario, I count on having white Christmases. To everyone’s surprise and disappointment, this year’s was warm and browny-green, so my family and I made the best of it by riding...
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Of Ships and Suns - by Katherine Langrish
In all kinds of mythologies there are stories about sailing across the sea to a mystical land. Maybe peoples of all races and all times have this in their blood: anyone who’s ever stood at the...
View ArticleFlatulence, Indigestion, Black Death, not to mention Acne ... by Joan Lennon
The season of excess in food and drink is still strong in our memories, as are thoughts of ensuing digestive difficulties. (If you type "Healthy January" into Google, you get something like 530...
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Undress your mind by Lydia Syson
Ella Fitzgerald introduced me to sexology. I was probably eleven or twelve when I fell in love with the Cole Porter Songbook, though it was years before I realised exactly what Ella was singing about....
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FROM BATS TO BEDS TO BOOKS by Adèle Geras
I live in a village just south of Cambridge. My house is the fourth on the left as you 'cross the border' (the sign saying Great Shelford) from Cambridge. Indeed I can see the sign saying 'Welcome to...
View ArticleNovember Competition
The winners of Five Children on the Western Front are:Ruan PeatClare MulleyLinda LawlorYoung Historian (Lauren)Jax BluntYou can get your prizes by sending your land address to Hannah Love at Faber:...
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THIS LITTLE PIGGY by Karen Maitland
I don’t know about you, but pigs are the last animals I ever expect to encounter as ghosts. They seem such solid, down-to-earth creatures. But there are a surprising number of accounts of ghostly pigs...
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12 Reasons to see this Sherlock Exhibition
by Caroline LawrenceSherlock Holmes by Sidney PagetReaders of my posts will know that like many others I love Sherlock Holmes in all his manifest forms and permutations. I first came across the famous...
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From Aldo to the Reader, with love - Michelle Lovric
The Aldine Press's anchor and dolphin logoWe have many reasons to thank Aldo Manuzio of Venice’s famed Aldine Press. Not least for his limpid Bembo font, one of my favourites, and the lasting legacy...
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