Cannonball Read 13

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News from back then

Strange Victoriana: Tales of the Curious, the Weird and the Uncanny from Our Victorian Ancestors by Jan Bondeson

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Strange Victoriana, the first from my massive pile of Christmas swag, is an entertaining collection of the weird, wonderful, spooky, salacious, and sometimes downright macabre stories taken from the Illustrated Police News (IPN) – an immensely popular tabloid of the time (you’ll have seen some of its illustrations before, particularly if you’ve ever had any kind of interest in the Jack the Ripper case which the IPN went to town on). Victorians are often thought of as incredibly repressed and prudish, while a quick peruse […]

The King who brought back partying

A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration by Jenny Uglow

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Charles II is an interesting figure to me, partly because he seems so much more human than the joyless Oliver Cromwell who’d preceded him having lopped Charles’ dad’s head off (also interesting to me, as despite my reading habits I’m actually anti-monarchy) but mostly influenced by the fact that before reading this, pretty much everything I knew about him was gleaned from Horrible Histories (and this song in particular – to be fair, they do a pretty decent job of covering the highlights). Thanks to […]

The Crown ain’t got nothing on this

Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court by Lucy Worsley

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For some years now I’ve been trying to work my way somewhat chronologically through English history, but a new mania for all things Georgian plus Lucy Worsley had me eagerly jumping ahead (I’m coming back for you, Charlie II, don’t worry). Inspired by the King’s Grand Staircase at Kensington Palace, commissioned by George I and featuring portraits of the servants of the Royal household, Courtiers is a brilliantly gossipy look at the reigns of Georges I and II and the different figures that peopled their […]

who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel

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Yes, I know that Hamilton and Tudor England are not the same thing, but we all know that history is decided by the survivors. Who won? Whoever died last. Who was paid, how much was spent, who wielded the most glorious or secret power, who promised what to where- it does not matter. Thomas Cromwell, in the moment at least, lost. He was *centuries old spoiler alert* beheaded, and spent the last several hundred years painted as a scoundrel and a cheat. Many called him a […]

“First I’m going to have a little drinkie, and then I’m going to execute the whole bally lot of you.”

Dangerous Days in Elizabethan England by Terry Deary

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The third book in Deary’s Dangerous Days series takes a quick jaunt around the Elizabethan era, peeking behind the jewelled skirts of the Queen to see the smallpox scars and filth-encrusted streets underneath. Given what a huge influence Elizabeth’s family and upbringing would have had on her psychology, the first half of the book focuses on them from her birth on – her psychopath father declaring her a bastard and having her mother beheaded, her sickly brother dying soon into his rule, her bloodthirsty sister […]



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