Red Indians and how to tame them
The Elizabethans’ colonial voyages brought them into contact with a people very different level of civilisation from their own—the ‘Indians’...
16/01/2017
Cultural and social history
Mormons in search of Promised Land, 1846-69
The Mormons have been described as the most systematic, organised, disciplined and successful pioneers in American history. For over 20...
11/12/2016
The entertainment in Tudor England
Apart from eating and drinking (and smoking), the Tudors were enthusiastic merrymakers: they liked to entertain and to be entertained....
20/05/2015
The changing role of woman in 20th-century Britain
Perhaps the most dramatic improvement in Britain’s way of life in the 20th century was the change in the place...
07/03/2014
London homes in Shakespeare’s time
Thanks to decades of peace, English houses are no longer made for defence but for comfort. The newly rich may...
09/12/2013
Food and drink in the Middle Ages
The production, processing, and consumption of foodstuffs were a primary preoccupation of the medieval population. In the earlier unsettled period,...
17/11/2013
The Gypsies, from 10th to 20th century
The Gypsies, or Roma, are unique: they are the only nomadic people in recorded history who have not been either...
21/09/2013
Robert Owen’s social experiment at New Lanark
One of the Scotland’s great social reformers was a Welshman, Robert Owen, born in 1771. He would have been saddened...
01/09/2013
Punishing the poor
Poverty came close to being a crime in 16th and 17th century England. Once the needy sought help from the...
21/06/2013
The slang in Elizabethan London
Pronunciation of words in Elizabethan English is a complicated matter, since linguistically it rests between the “say what you see”...
14/10/2012