It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a woman in possession of a love of history, must be in want of a blog.
Stretching from the West End to the City, the coffee-houses of 17th and 18th century London formed the capital's intellectual and social heartbeat. Coffee, a relatively new and exotic import, was only half the attraction: coffee-houses were forums for intellectual discussion, havens for dirty business deals and places where lords and sharpers won and lost …
Although we are regularly reminded of the potential health risks of drinking too much coffee, to my knowledge no-one has yet argued that men ought to cut back on coffee because it makes them impotent. However, that is exactly what one bawdy pamphlet from 1674 claims. Given the catchy title of The Women's petition against …
Continue reading Does coffee make men impotent? a 17th-century perspective
There seems to be something inherently social about drinking coffee. We ask people to come in for a cup of tea, but we go out for coffee with friends, family and colleagues. This isn't a modern phenomenon; coffee has always been intimately connected with sociability. In North Africa and the Middle East, coffee-houses had been …
Continue reading The rise and fall of the English coffee-house