This takes all the biscotti

From a British daily that once was listed in the realm of ‘quality newspapers’ but has descended the slippery slope of clickbait, The Daily Telegraph, today comes this howl-at-the-moon mad piece of over-interpretation of archaeology based on an agenda. We have previously ventured into noting that everything that ended up in a river or a ditch must have had… Continue reading This takes all the biscotti

E Pur si Muove

There is something disarmingly strengthening when you hear that innocent piping voice of history whispering from the unencumbered past, ‘excuse me, but I think you are perhaps mistaken…” I am not a climatologist, but… I am certain that the congregation of the pro-warmist faith is probably 99 per cent made up of people just as… Continue reading E Pur si Muove

Indian hemp in a French café

Forgotten Books is a website that deserves accolades. Yesterday they despatched the bound volume of Medical Times for 1850. It has copious specific and detailed information covering so much of the small stuff of life and death. By that I mean narratives on operations carried out — successfully or not; anesthesia; public health; water and… Continue reading Indian hemp in a French café

More from the Little Cyclopedia of Common Things

More real life from the 1880s as told to readers of the Little Cyclopedia of Common Things, (see a previous post for more about the book), brought to you this time by the letter P. Every one a winner for historical novelists. First up is a listing for Paint. There wasn’t much in paint then… Continue reading More from the Little Cyclopedia of Common Things

Catherine Foster; the inquest

Just to recap (though it may assist you if you read this and the next couple of episodes by starting from the previous blog), the God-fearing young farm worker John Foster, a one-time neighbour o’mine, swallowed poison from his wife during dinner on Tuesday night November 17, 1846. Within minutes he was sick as a… Continue reading Catherine Foster; the inquest

5000 Spirits of a village, or the Layers of The Onion

Not a 100 yards from where I write this, in this sleepiest of sleepy Suffolk villages, a murder has been committed. The local paper, the East Anglian Daily Times, to which I am ever grateful for being a newspaper of the old school, wrote it up over Christmas. It would be churlish not to point… Continue reading 5000 Spirits of a village, or the Layers of The Onion

‘The air of cities is less pure — more people breathe it’

Glancing through my Little Cyclopædia of Common Things, I have to acknowledge once again it’s the small stuff of history that gets forgotten. The Little Cyclopædia is not so little, by the way, stretching to nearly 700 pages. Mine is the ninth edition, published in 1891, but the information comes from a decade before. Books… Continue reading ‘The air of cities is less pure — more people breathe it’