The Victoria and Albert museum has about seven miles of exhibition rooms crammed with beautiful stuff from all ages and corners of the globe. I can’t imagine anyone being able to see the whole thing in week let alone a day. My visits have been kept fairly short. After about two hours in any museum I start having sensory overload. My eyes start to bug out and images start to swirl into meaningless blotches of painful shapes and colours. Six hours in the V&A and I’d be done for! Can you imagine some poor security guard finding me passed out, spread eagle like some dazed votary infront of a naked Celtic warrior. Have you ever seen the sculpture, “The Fallen Gaul”? I don’t know if the V&A has a copy, but it’s one of my favorite…yes he’s naked and has a wee too much facial hair, but he’s so lovely…even if he is dying. [Read more…] about Lost Stories at the V&A
Do you think he looks like Strathmore or Lyndhurst?
If you’ve read my free story Lucky in Love and you enjoyed The Duke of Strathmore or my other stories with his cousin The Duke of Lyndhurst you might find this interesting. I thought I’d watch a Miss Marple mystery while eating my dinner (I worked all day on Dancing the Maypole…I’m nearly done with chapter 14). So I went onto Youtube and realised I couldn’t remember how The Moving Finger ended so I clicked on the new version of it with Geraldine McEwan. If like me you’re a die hard Joan Hickson as Miss Marple fan the new versions aren’t as good, but they’re not bad.
It started and after awhile I realised I knew the face of the man playing the narator. If you’ve never heard of James D’arcy he’s a really good English actor. [Read more…] about Do you think he looks like Strathmore or Lyndhurst?
Who was born 250 years ago today?
250 years ago today Robert Burns was born. Today people all over the world will gather to celebrate his life and work. Why? Who was Robert Burns? He was a Scottish farmer-poet and you will know one of his songs even if you’ve never heard his name. Auld Lang Syne, the song the world sings at New Years…that’s Robert Burns! Technically he died before “The Regency” began, but his poetry heavily influenced the poets and politics of the nineteenth century. [Read more…] about Who was born 250 years ago today?
A Day in London
Last Tuesday I spent the day in London. I was early for the morning 9:26 train so I sat there in the cold watching endless people come and go almost all of them wearing black or at least some sort of black coat. I felt like I was on the set of The Damned. I must have looked like a circus freak in my happy multi-coloured striped wool sweater (my Fairy godmother sent it to me for Christmas) worn over my bright orange sweater (they really do match). My sister Sarah will be relieved to hear I did NOT wear my white knitted cap that rides up and makes me look like I dream of being the Pope. My hair looked really good and I felt really beautiful! It was probably the magic lipstick my Fairy godmother also sent me (I have an amazing Fairy godmother). So there I was all Joseph and his Amazing coloured dream-sweater and trying to remember not to put my feet on the opposite train seat because they arrest people for that heinous crime over here and I don’t really want a police record. The ruling Labour Government, when they were at school all read George Orwell’s 1984 and mistook it as a handbook. It must be true because they seem determined to recreate it, but never mind the unelected Mr Brown and his mindless-minions. I’d decided I was going to have a fantastic day. [Read more…] about A Day in London
Georgian infertility…a money making opportunity
Wealthy Georgians desperate to have a child in 1780 would have heard about Dr James Graham’s Grand Celestial bed with curiosity and hope. (Lord Cranston’s parents tried it without success.) Dr Graham rented a house in Pall Mall and constructed this contraption that he advertised as an aid to fertility. Patrons paid £50 a night for a chance to use it. In modern money given the fluctuating state of inflation one night would have cost over 4000£ (that’s about $7000 US dollars) for the privilege of spending one night in a bed, but this was no ordinary bed! Dr Graham (a real doctor who became known as the Doctor of Love) designed this bed himself as an aid to procreation. It was based on his previous experiments with electrocution and magnetism (and I assume his own fertile adventures).
[Read more…] about Georgian infertility…a money making opportunity
A Regency Note…
Quite often I accidentally come across strange Regency related information. (I plan to start sharing these nuggets of the weird and bizarre regularly if you’re interested). Today I was perusing the Gutenburg Project with the intention of reading Edgar Allan Poe and looking up Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Vindication of the Rights of Women. I read “The Purloined Letter” and then out of curiosity I thought I’d skim through the list of authors starting with A. I ended up in Anonymous and came across the title, “Goody Two Shoes”. Having spent most of my teen years in the 80’s this title conjurs up that irritating song by Adam Ant. It was a phrase that I assumed had come out of the 1940’s or 50’s. But no…it was a book. I clicked on it and found that it was a children’s book first published by John Newbery in 1765. The following excerpt is taken from the preface of a Victorian edition. It’s like a peep-hole through time.
“…in 1802, (the Regency link) Charles Lamb in writing to Coleridge (the poet), said–