It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a love of history, must be in want of a blog.
Following several festive-themed posts, a three week Christmas break and the latest installment of Miss Tickletoby's Lectures on English History, now for something completely different. For most people in the Anglo-Saxon world at least, Danish history is a blank, perhaps filled in only by vague memories of Hamlet's line "something is rotten in the state …
Continue reading Johann Struensee, the German doctor who ruled Denmark
In 1842, William Thackeray published the fourth of his satirical pieces titled Miss Tickletoby's Lectures on English History, in Punch magazine, for which he was a regular contributor. They are a hilarious send-up of 19th-century English education, as captured through the lectures of the imaginary schoolmistress/historian, Miss Tickletoby. Readers who can remember Our Island Story may see some similarities …
Continue reading Miss Tickletoby’s Lectures on English History: The Norman Conquest
Although it took its final form in Victorian England, the origins of Christmas pudding lie back in the middle ages, in the now-forgotten 'plum pottage'. Pottage was a general term for a mixture of ingredients, usually meat and vegetables, boiled together in a cauldron for several hours. It was very versatile and was a staple …