The next morning found us in the Troubadour in Earl’s Court for breakfast. Not an obvious choice, perhaps, but a very good one. The Troubadour is more well-known as a music venue. In 2019, you could get an excellent breakfast there. (It looks like you can still get brunch at the weekend.) Our visit to…
Normally, I don’t keep a journal during my travels, but I made a compromise last year. For years now, I have been starting each day with a ‘Morning Pages’ session. This is a practice that is meant to make me a proper writer. The idea is that I’m to get up each day and, before…
The final day of a holiday can be melancholy. You are not ready to go back to reality, but knowing you have to. This is balanced against wanting to squeeze every moment of enjoyment in that you can. If there is ever a way that I can become the Lord Mayor of York, I’ll take…
A benefit to having a hangover is not needing to stop for breakfast. We had an appointment to keep at our next destination and needed to be on the move anyway. The Oxford Tube had plenty of space. We got returns for we would be coming back through the next day. The visit was to…
I found inspiration for the novel I’m (still, a year later) working on
I’m happy to say that I’ve joined an exciting new project! ‘Books and Borrowing, 1750-1830: An Analysis of Scottish Borrowers’ Registers’ is a three-year AHRC-funded project which explores How the untapped potential of Scottish borrowers’ registers can be employed to enrich our knowledge of the histories of books and reading. The project started at the…
“Miss Graham, I cannot go out but I am dunn’d with poor Mally’s light carriage with the servants and others in the neighbourhood, which you cannot but know. If she behave so now, What will she do afterwards? which has given me more uneasiness than all I heard from Moffat. It is not my children, but every body will talk. I wish I may be preserved from danger at this time of life, and not be made a speech to the whole country. I hope there is no harm done, is all from, your most obedient servant. James Paisley.”
Sometimes being a historian is just plain fun… See ‘Armada chests and legal documents: Anderson Strathern‘ by Professor John W. Cairns the Edinburgh Legal History blog for a recent adventure featuring locked treasure chests, legal documents, and getting covered in the dust of ages. I was delighted to be invited along to the ceremonial opening…
If you have ever visited a country house, castle, or other historic building that displays fire screens, it is likely that you have read or heard that they were necessary for a very odd reason. In the eighteenth century, you see, both men and women ‘wore heavy wax makeup and the screens were there to…
At the finish of my latest time-limited job, I decided not to seek full-time work – unless something came up that I really wanted to do. I was lucky to have some part-time work lined up and some freelancing and my husband agreed that we’d manage. I’m lucky in that: it has not always been…
