Bianca Maria Visconti, Duchess of Milan
1 week ago
What would New Year's Eve be like without Prince Orlofsky's party in Die Fledermaus? Allow me to quote from the great Victor Borge's My Favourite Intervals.
As the curtain goes up, we see an empty room in the Eisenstein house. This is a crucial moment in the operetta, because it's the last time anybody knows for sure what's going on. After that, the plot is one mass of confusion, with mistaken identities, people making love to their own wives, and other absurdities. In many productions on Die Fledermaus, performers wander...
With the traditional staple of conservative Christmas greetings: Dingley Dell.
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Today is the anniversary of the Tamworth Manifesto, issued by Sir Robert Peel on December 18, 1834. It remains one of the most important documents in the history of the Conservative Par...
Historical fiction was the introduction to history for me as it must have been for many people. Somehow, as time went on and I read more history and biography I began to find the fictional version less interesting. I still reach for Georgette Heyer's Regency romances if I want a pleasant comfortable afternoon and there are one or two (not many more) historical detective story writers whose work I enjoy but I doubt whether I would get quite as involved with The Three Musketeers as I did at the age of 10. The real story behind...
For the man, woman and child who has everything, there are wonderful presents (TH is not given to advertising usually) to be had from the Conservative Party Archives.
How can one resist Labour Isn't Working playing cards or a Socialism throttling the country mug? Many excellent posters and postcards as well as The Carlton Club by Sir Charles Petrie and Alistair Cooke (now Lord Lexd...
Yesterday was the anniversary of the Statute of Westminster 1931, which "established legislative equality for the self-governing Dominions of the British Empire with the United Kingdom, thereby marking the effective legislative independence of these countries, either immediately or upon ratification".
This vital piece of legislation that brought the concept of the Empire forward toward the eventual creation of a Commonwealth is not as widely recognized as it ought to be. Nor is it taught at schools but then how much history...
The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, thus finally bringing the United States into World War II. That and Hitler's monumental folly in declaring war on that country. However, the link I have, via The Raw Story, is to a fascinating story of one eyewitness account, which was considered to be too harrowing at the time (yes, well, war is harrowing) being published. Here is that harrowing ta...
Gosh, this makes me really important. Not just an article in History Today but a podcast, as we...
Tory Historian has no doubt whatsoever that Sherlock Holmes would have hated his birthday mentioned and really we are merely recalling the 125th anniversary of his first appearance in A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton's Christmas Annual of 18...
