Among the colorful personalities of the late Georgian/Early Victorian world of the 1830s Lady Hester Stanhope stands out for her brilliance, independence, and sheer brazen disregard for social mores. If ladies rode sidesaddle;… Continue reading
Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet may have been a stargazer, a musician, and even a poet, but he was no dreamer. His work regarding the collection and quantification of data influenced science and social… Continue reading
This week’s Victorian character impresses as more than just colorful. Madame Rachel, notorious con artist and flamboyant celebrity, made a fortune off the vanity and gullibility of high society. She may have been… Continue reading
Victorian England, as I pointed out in my earlier post, The Pastry Chef, produced a bumper crop of genuine characters: rogues, villains, explorers, heroes, geniuses, entrepreneurs, and colorful eccentrics. This week I highlight a… Continue reading
…lonely cairns are o’er the men, Who fought and died for Charlie! Sound the Pibroch, traditional ballad If the men who fell at Culloden lie under lonely cairns, where is Bonnie Prince… Continue reading
As England slipped from the Georgian era into the Victorian and the sun no longer set on the British Empire, the country produced a bumper crop of interesting people: rogues, villains, explorers, heroes,… Continue reading
If fiction fuels the mind, historical fiction poured jet fuel into mine from early on. It created a lifelong fascination with history and pushed me to question everything I read. Why question? At… Continue reading
On December 25, 1950, General Edward Almond arrived in Pusan, South Korea along with the very last of the refugees from Hungnam in the north following a horrific military disaster. Chinese forces pushed… Continue reading
November moves along and it is time for tall black hats, turkey, and indigenous peoples in highly incorrect head dresses. In the United States we all know the drill: the Pilgrim Fathers of… Continue reading
A novel is generally considered “historical” when it is set fifty years or more in the past. By that standard any story set before 1966, when the first of the baby boomers left… Continue reading
