Historical newspapers are a treasure trove of information about the ways people lived in the past. The Wanted Ads can provide us with information about everything from the types of jobs on offer, the people offering services, the range of accommodation, and the wide variety of goods traded and sold, not to mention the infinite … Continue reading Handy Household Hints – The Art of Making Do
Interesting things
Handy Household Hints – Keeping yourself nice
While trawling though historical newspapers recently I read, in amongst a collection of household hints, a particularly eye-watering recipe for a hair tonic (more about that later). At that moment household hints seemed vastly more fascinating than the topic I was researching so I went on a household hint hunt. Newspaper columns devoted to these … Continue reading Handy Household Hints – Keeping yourself nice
Happy New Year
The clock has ticked over and it is now officially 2022 all along latitude 144° 58' 0.01" East. With 2020 and 2021 behind us, I'm hoping for a pleasantly boring and uneventful year, no 'interesting times' at all. Wishing everyone the very best for 2022 – hoping the year is a happy, healthy and productive … Continue reading Happy New Year
A Christmas Stocking
Christmas stockings and ‘stocking fillers‘ are now a traditional part of Christmas. A quick consultation with those two noisy colleagues Drs Google and Wikipedia will tell you that this tradition had its origin in the story of St Nicholas, initially secretly, providing three bags of gold as dowries for the three daughters of a poor … Continue reading A Christmas Stocking
More Meandering through Cyberspace – June 2020
The world has changed since I last wrote of my meanderings through cyberspace. While our physical lives have been circumscribed, the wonderful world of the internet has opening up new vistas. So here are a few of the interesting places I've been over the last three months. Perhaps the machines will take over one day. … Continue reading More Meandering through Cyberspace – June 2020
A Few of My Favourite Things
We all have bits and pieces in our homes that make us happy. They may not be particularly valuable or even elegant but because they call to mind special people or happy times they are special to us. Some of them connect us to our family's past, others simply 'spark joy'. This is the chest … Continue reading A Few of My Favourite Things
Meandering through Cyberspace in February 2020
The internet has dramatically enlarged our access to a wealth of information. Most days I spend some time online looking for items related to those things the interest me most - reading, writing and history. Without fail, every time, I find something new and interesting. So, here, I'd like to share a few of the … Continue reading Meandering through Cyberspace in February 2020
A Horrible Pestiferous Vice or Wholesome Exercise? – Dancing in Elizabethan England
Elizabeth I Dancing with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester Philip Stubbs, the Puritan pamphleteer, in his Anatomie of Abuses (1582-3) had little good to say about dancing unless men and women were dancing separately to the glory of God, following the example of King David. He described it as 'an introduction to whordom, a preparatiue … Continue reading A Horrible Pestiferous Vice or Wholesome Exercise? – Dancing in Elizabethan England
Unknown Unknowns and Elizabethan Earrings
A few of my favourite things. When you are writing historical fiction it is always the unknown unknowns that will bite you - those things that it has not occurred to you that you need to check. A couple of weeks ago I had a moment or several of historical fiction writer's sheer panic when … Continue reading Unknown Unknowns and Elizabethan Earrings
Elizabethan Magpie Pickings
I have something of a magpie brain—I like to collect shiny bits of information, not necessarily immediately useful but interesting, to me at least. Over the past few weeks I have been heavily revising my current work in progress, The Bridled Tongue, and checking that I have no glaring anachronisms. These are some of the … Continue reading Elizabethan Magpie Pickings
Catherine Meyrick 