It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a love of history, must be in want of a blog.
The eighteenth century was, as any landlubber knows, the Golden Age of swashbuckling Pirates-of-the-Caribbean style piracy. Eighteenth-century pirates (as opposed to their unglamorous modern counterparts) have acquired their own roguish mystique. What is less commonly known is that women, too, had their place in eighteenth-century piracy. I remember, when I was small, being entranced by their stories in my Ladybird …
Continue reading Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two 18th-century pirates
Notwithstanding the recent diplomatic thaw between the US and Iran, most people in the West, if asked to envisage the Islamic Republic, would probably think of a country of religious zealots, full of oppressed women swathed in black robes. What's perhaps not so well-known is that for much of the 20th century, Iran was a …
Continue reading Before the Revolution: images of secular Iran
Perhaps the most calamitous chapter in all Scottish history was opened when Charles Edward Stuart, more commonly referred to as 'Bonnie Prince Charlie', decided to invade Scotland in 1745 in hopes of regaining the British crown. Charles Stuart was either the 'Young Pretender' or the legitimate heir to the British throne, depending on whether one's sympathies lay with …
Continue reading ‘Butcher Cumberland’ and the smashing of the Highland clans