It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a love of history, must be in want of a blog.
St Vladimir of Kiev, or Vladimir the Great, as he is also known, is one of the most unlikely saints in the Christian calendar. He is still venerated today as the father of Christianity in Russia and the Ukraine, yet for much of his life he was the very stereotype of a pagan king: bloodthirsty, …
Continue reading Vladimir the Great: pagan, philanderer, saint
Following several festive-themed posts, a three week Christmas break and the latest installment of Miss Tickletoby's Lectures on English History, now for something completely different. For most people in the Anglo-Saxon world at least, Danish history is a blank, perhaps filled in only by vague memories of Hamlet's line "something is rotten in the state …
Continue reading Johann Struensee, the German doctor who ruled Denmark
In 1842, William Thackeray published the fourth of his satirical pieces titled Miss Tickletoby's Lectures on English History, in Punch magazine, for which he was a regular contributor. They are a hilarious send-up of 19th-century English education, as captured through the lectures of the imaginary schoolmistress/historian, Miss Tickletoby. Readers who can remember Our Island Story may see some similarities …
Continue reading Miss Tickletoby’s Lectures on English History: The Norman Conquest