It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a love of history, must be in want of a blog.
Stretching from the West End to the City, the coffee-houses of 17th and 18th century London formed the capital's intellectual and social heartbeat. Coffee, a relatively new and exotic import, was only half the attraction: coffee-houses were forums for intellectual discussion, havens for dirty business deals and places where lords and sharpers won and lost …
The Georgian era (1714-1837) was the golden age of English print satire. Gillray, Rowlandson and the Cruikshank family made themselves famous with their exuberant, brightly-coloured caricatures which lampooned everything from government to the clergy, from fashion to the French. Here are some of their satirical takes on marriage. They point out the problems so often …
Continue reading The torments of marriage in Georgian caricatures
When asked to think of a hermit, most people would imagine a bearded old monk sitting in a cave battered by sea-spray or desert winds, along the lines of St Guthlac, St Antony or Simeon the Stylite (whom I mentioned in one of my first posts). This picture may have been true in the medieval period, …