William Adam was an English sailor working as a pilot on a Dutch expedition of five ships that set out in 1598 to make money in the Orient. In 1600, after a disastrous voyage during which just about everything went wrong, Adam was one of just 24 men surviving on one of the ships – [...]
Posts tagged with ‘history’
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‘Elizabeth’ by David Starkey
9 August 2007 – 11:57 am
I’ve just been reading Elizabeth by David Starkey, a book about the early life of Elizabeth I. It covers the very start of her reign, but most of it is about her relationships with Henry VIII, Edward VI and Mary Tudor.
It raises the question: when little girls want to be princesses, what kind of princess [...]
Notes from the war
6 July 2007 – 5:52 pm
Not the current debacle in Iraq, the ‘39-’45 war. I’m reading the second volume of the Mass-Observation diaries (see my post about the first one here), and I thought I’d just pick out a couple of quotes. After the battle of Alamein:
The newspapers are in ecstasies. There are more maps than ever, showing arrows pointing [...]
‘We Are At War’ by Simon Garfield
19 June 2007 – 4:57 pm
This is one of a trilogy of books using material from the Mass-Observation archives. To quote Wikipedia:
Mass-Observation was a United Kingdom social research organisation founded in 1937. Their work ended in the mid 1950s … Mass-Observation aimed to record everyday life in Britain through a panel of around 500 untrained volunteer observers who either maintained [...]
‘amongst other things’
29 May 2007 – 12:49 pm
Today’s entry from Darwin’s Beagle diary:
29th May 1832
Rio de Janeiro
Cloudy greyish day, something like an Autumnal one in England; without however its soothing quietness. I wanted to send a note this morning into the city & had the greatest difficulty in procuring anybody to take it. All white men are above it, & every black [...]
Anglo-Saxon names
20 May 2007 – 10:48 pm
Teju has a couple of great posts about names and what they mean (1, 2), specifically relating to Yoruba. Which set me thinking about Anglo-Saxon naming.
I have no idea exactly what relationship the Saxons had with their names, and I don’t know what academic work has been done on it—I’m just going on the impression [...]
marking the 200th anniversary of abolition
16 March 2007 – 5:01 pm
March 25th is the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Slave Trade Act which abolished the slave trade — though not slavery itself — in the British Empire. And like everyone else, I think, I’m unsure how we, the British, should mark it.
Celebration doesn’t seem quite the right tone to strike: it’s a bit [...]
Darwin’s prose
28 February 2007 – 11:04 pm
I recently found Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary, being posted ‘live’ on the internet with a mere 175 year time-lag (see also Pepys, Thoreau).
He’s only just reached Brazil, so there’s plenty of time to join the fun. This is from today’s entry:
The houses are white and lofty and from the windows being narrow and long have [...]
Steinbeck on lice
25 January 2007 – 3:28 pm
Rob posting Burns’s To a Louse reminded me of this passage. It’s from a John Steinbeck letter, but I encountered it in John Carey’s brilliant anthology, The Faber Book of Science.
The Morgan Library has a very fine 11th-century Launcelot in perfect condition. I was going over it one day and turned to the rubric of [...]
‘Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring’
9 January 2007 – 12:09 pm
I’m just reading a book by Alice Thomas Ellis called Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring: A Gallimaufry. It’s a book about the history of food and it’s both very entertaining and extremely annoying. Annoying because it is indeed a gallimaufry (’a confused jumble or medley of things’). The book is loosely organised into themed [...]
Elizabethiana
7 December 2006 – 2:43 am
I’m currently reading a biography of Bess of Hardwick. I’m not that far through it yet (don’t tell me how it ends!*), but one thing is striking, reading about Tudor England†: how capricious the politics is and how much it’s dependent on patronage and favour. Admittedly, the period I’ve read about so far covers the [...]
More ethnic food slurs
15 November 2006 – 4:28 pm
I was watching Antiques Roadshow at the weekend and some chap brought in an C18th* English silver sauce boat. The expert got excited because it was a rare early example; apparently before that point English food rarely had sauces but it was about then that some people started employing French cooks.
So far, reasonable enough and [...]
Religion as a symptom
18 October 2006 – 3:47 pm
I was thinking about why the atheism thing seems important to me at the moment.
I don’t think I’ve ever articulated it to myself explicitly before, but I think it amounts to a sense that if, in a hundred years time, the world is less religious — fewer believers and less fervent belief — that’s a [...]
One Day In History and At Home In Renaissance Italy
17 October 2006 – 3:46 pm
I think this is quite a fun idea — One Day In History.
Make history with us on 17 October by taking part in the biggest blog in history.
‘One Day in History’ is a one off opportunity for you to join in a mass blog for the national record. We want as many people as possible [...]
Colonial troops in WWII
13 October 2006 – 1:06 pm
I found this article in the Independent interesting. There’s a film coming out in France called Indigènes about “the 300,000 Arab and north African soldiers who helped to liberate France in 1944.” Apparently about half the French army in 1944 was African or Arab. The director and producer, both French of North African descent, “hope [...]
David Tennant on ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’
27 September 2006 – 10:26 pm
Who Do You Think You Are? is a BBC series where they trace the family history of celebrities. There was a particularly good episode tonight with David Tennant (Doctor Who, among other acting credits). Good both because he’s an articulate, personable man and because they had some good material to work with; one branch of [...]
Biography
26 September 2006 – 5:20 pm
I do enjoy reading biographies. Not just to learn more about people I have a special interest in, but as a more entertaining way of reading about history.
There can be something a bit stifling about the careful thoroughness of the conscientious historian trying to lay out all the strands of a complicated subject. The joy [...]
the clean, dry corpse of a parrot
20 September 2006 – 4:48 pm
From Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That:
24 June, 1915, Versailles. This afternoon we had a cricket match, officers v. sergeants, in an enclosure between some houses out of observation from the enemy. Our front line is three-quarters of a mile away. I made top score, 24; the bat was a bit of a rafter, the [...]
FSotW: Tyneham - the village that died for D-Day
9 September 2006 – 2:17 pm
Flickr set of the week is Tyneham - the village that died for D-Day by Whipper_snapper.
‘In 1943 the War Department closed Tyneham village near Lulworth in Dorset for D-Day training preparations.
The villagers never returned as the War Department kept the village as a post-war training area and tank artillery range for nearby Lulworth and Bovington [...]
Shelley the lost Victorian
6 September 2006 – 1:00 pm
Well, I’ve finished Richard Holmes’s Shelley:The Pursuit. I didn’t find it as gripping as his superb biography of Coleridge, but it became more enjoyable as it went along. Mainly, I think, because Shelley became much more likeable as he matured personally, politically and poetically. Not that he became less radical, or completely lost the restlessness [...]