From football to fish and chips, from tabloids to faithlessness - a remarkable number of facets of modern British life can be traced to the 'Age of Equipoise', and specifically to the year 1860, argues Henry Jeffreys... In 1860 a Jewish man called Joseph Malin in the East of London had ... Read More...
Victoriana
Nige on the French artist whose largely inaccurate drawings fixed an idea of Victorian London in the popular consciousness... The dark, dramatic engravings of Gustave Doré have done a lot to fix our image of Victorian London, in all its murky squalor. But (as I learnt from an informative footnote in Bill Bryson's ... Read More...
A variation on a theme of Alfred, Lord Tennyson... “Come into the garden, Maud.” “Not on your nelly. You know only too well that I am a neurasthenic recluse, and I prefer to remain in my bungalow with the windows shuttered, sitting at my escritoire penning tear-stained verses. When I have finished ... Read More...
Ambrose Bierce was the most brutal book reviewer of his era. It's probably just as well he never had to give his verdict on Oscar Wilde... In his 1967 biography of Ambrose Bierce [above], Richard O'Connor noted that the “chore” of book-reviewing hackwork “unleashed [Bierce's] most savage energies”. We are given two ... Read More...
Nige unearths a neglected gem of Victorian poety by the almost-forgotten Jean Ingelow... Unless a man is an extraordinary coxcomb, a person of private means, or both, he seldom has the time and opportunity of committing, or the wish to commit, bad or indifferent verse for a long series of years; ... Read More...
Bookseller Steerforth handles a great many old books in his line of work. Often he'll find old photos and albums amongst the piles of mildewed tomes: snapshots of lost worlds and forgotten lives. Continuing the series in which he shares some of the more interesting discoveries, here are more of the incredible ... Read More...
Nige pays tribute to the extraordinary Victorian spinster, globetrotter, botanist, artist and 'very wild bird', Marianne North... Tomorrow marks the birthday of the brilliant flower painter and tireless traveller Marianne North (born 1830), who, even by the standards of intrepid, globetrotting Victorian spinsters, was pretty extraordinary. In an age before jet ... Read More...
This week Frank's cupboard contains some essential equipment for the Victorian camping enthusiast... For convenience the following list is inserted here. It is condensed from a number of notes made for trips of all sorts, except boating and horseback-riding. It is by no means exhaustive... Be careful not to be led ... Read More...
Next time you complain about your GP, spare a thought for the Victorians... From The Reverend Prince And His Abode Of Love by Charles Mander (1976): As a doctor his bedside manner was startling. He seemed more intent on reducing his patients to gibbering mental wrecks over the state of their souls ... Read More...
Ever wondered why sailors' wives retain their youthful looks for so long, or why giants have low sexual energy? 'Professor' R. B. D. Wells has the answers... Curmudgeons who moan about bloggers and Wikipedia argue that the democratic nature of the web has allowed ill-informed, ordinary people to flood the internet ... Read More...
