Technical problems have prevented postings on this site and on Tory Historian's blog. These have now been solved or so we have been led to assume. Postings will resume in a very short ti...
The book on Knole and the Sackvilles (mentioned here and here) has now been read. There are many interesting moments in it but one particularly tantalizing question arose on page 134: could John Frederick Sackville, the third Duke of Dorset have prevented the French Revolution.
The Sackville family became great supporters of cricket on their estate and, indeed, played it themselves, putting together teams at various times to play others.
In...
October 16, 1834 was the day Parliament burned down to be rebuilt eventually into the grand edifice we know today with Westminster Hall the only remaining mediaeval part. Caroline Shenton, a Parliamentary Archivist and author of The Day Parliament Burned Down, describes the events of that traumatic day.
J. M. W. Turner played the role of a disaster photographer by setting up his easel on the other side of the Thames and getting...
And here are a few excerpts from the newspapers of the d...
And talking of Georgians, the British Library's next big exhibition is going to be about them. The full title will be Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain and it promises to be fascinating. One hopes there will not be too much harping on the various clashes between politesse and riotous behaviour, riches and poverty and more emphasis on this:
From beautifully furnished homes to raucous gambling dens, Georgians Revealed explores the revolution in everyday life that took place between 1714 and 1830....
The Georgian Gentleman blog came my way because of its highly entertaining posting on coalitions then and now, complete with a Gillray cartoon of Charles James Fox and the 2nd Earl of Guilford, that can be described as "robust" and an updated version that used some version of photoshop. There seems to have been a good deal less snivelling among politicians at the time and they often gave as good as they received.
The blog, by Mike Rendell is based on diaries, letters and miscellaneous papers he inherited from his ancestor,...
Tory Historian continues to find Robert Sackville-West's book on Knole and the Sackvilles fascinating. Edward Sackville, the 4th Earl of Dorset, was described by his highly romantic descendant Vita Sackville-West as "the embodiment of Cavalier romance". As the author points out, he was a far more complicated character with interesting ideas though he did find himself on the Royalist side, despite his exasperation with King Charles I.
Edward...
The Museum of London has brought together for the first time since its discovery the entire Cheapside Hoard for an exhibition this winter. The collection of jewellery from the 16th and early 17th century was discovered more than a century ago (in 1912, to be precise) by by workmen using a pickaxe to excavate in a cellar near Cheapside in the City of London.
The Jewellery Editor writes:
The collection of 500 gems, including loose...
Yesterday's anniversary of Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich with that famous piece of paper in his hands requires a longish blog, on which I am working. In the meantime, let me remind readers of another anniversary, one that shows the triumph of humanity over barbarity.
October 1, 1943 was going to be the date on which the SS would round up the 7,800 Jews of Denmark, arguing that as the evening was that of Rosh Hashanah, they would all be at home. Instead, almost all of them had been warned, gone into hiding and were...
