Indholdsfortegnelse for No. 130 i All About History

Inside History ALL ABOUT THE GEORGIANS London 1682 - present Since the Georgian era, 10 Downing Street has been the home/office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (originally the First Lord of the Treasury). While there have been stretches where it was not used as a home, its location at the heart of Whitehall, the administrative centre of the government in London, has meant that it was almost always used as the office for the head of government and their cabinet. The first to take up residence at the address for this purpose was Sir Robert Walpole who was gifted the home by King George II in 1735, but he asked that it be made available to future Lords of the Treasury rather than be a personal property. This…

Hall of Fame ALL ABOUT THE GEORGIANS ELIZABETH RAFFALD 1733 -1781 Professional housekeeper, cook, confectioner, teacher, author; Elizabeth Raffald could be described by many job titles, but the most fitting is probably entrepreneur. Having spent some years working around Yorkshire, Raffald made her name in Manchester where she ran a shop and cookery school. She published her first cookbook in 1769, said to be a favourite of Queen Victoria's in later years. She went on to run an inn, carriage business, post office and started the local trade directory. Frances Burney 1752 - 1840 Before Jane Austen, there was Frances ‘Fanny’ Burney, the daughter of two musicians who used her experience growing up around the creative set of London to pen journals, letters and ultimately a novel dissecting life in London.…

THE CORRUPTION OF The Corruption of Henry VIII EXPERT BIO GLENN RICHARDSON Glenn Richardson is a Professor of Early Modern History at St. Mary's University, London. He specialises in Tudor politics and is the author of Wolsey (Routledge Press, 2020). Remembered as the monarch with six wives who broke away from the Catholic. Church, Henry VIII's reputation has been cemented as a result of his outrageous behaviour and bloody-minded approach to kingship. At the beginning of his reign, Henry embodied the ideal of an enlightened Renaissance prince who presided over a majestic court and could have taken England into a new golden age after years of uncertainty. So how did it all go wrong, and why did Henry VIII become memorialised as England's most tyrannical monarch? A HUMANIST PRINCE When Henry…

Today, the name of Yorkshire businesswoman and trailblazing lesbian Anne Lister is known to audiences across the globe. Thanks to Gentleman Jack, BBC/HBO's enormously successful biographical drama, Lister's life and her refusal to compromise on her ideals and passions have become an inspiration. Yet Anne Lister sprang not from the pages of fiction, but from the very real world of Georgian England. Her story is as remarkable today as it ever was, and a testament to her intelligence and determination in a world that wasn't used to women who trod their own path. Anne Lister was born in Halifax, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on 3 April 1791, and spent her early years on the family estate of Skelfler House in Market Weighton. As a child she was a…

1976 In 1976, the murders were immortalised in film when enterprising Texarkana filmmaker Charles B Pierce directed The Town That Dreaded Sundown. In 1972 Pierce had helmed the independent hit. The Legend Of Boggy Creek, a docu-drama based on Arkansas legend surrounding the Fouke Monster, a bigfoot-like creature. He continued writing and directing low-budget films, usually in Arkansas. Eventually, he hit upon the idea of bringing the Phantom Killer to the big screen. The film was only loosely based upon reality. One added sequence features a victim brutally killed by a knife strapped to the end of a trombone. An evocative image, but one far removed from the truth. The film also features an elaborate finale where Morales (the Gonzaullas substitute) chases the killer through the woods, only for him…

INTERVIEW WITH DR VIC CLARKE Vic is a lecturer in History at the University of Durham, UK. Her chapter on Victorian Britain in the Routledge Companion to Working-Class Literature will be published in late 2023. Working people had gathered enormous momentum by the early part of the 19th century. Cities and towns with their factories and mills devoured the landscape, with a huge volume of labour needed to power the vast and greedy British industrial engine. But with it came frustration at the continued lade of recognition for the vital role of the ordinary working population. No longer willing to be treated as disposable fuel to generate wealth for their bosses, they decided to make their voice heard, with a dream of an equal say in politics, turning a rotten…

An exhaustive exploration of class conflict through literature Author: Mark Steven Publisher: Verso Books Price: £18.99 Released: Out now Class War is an intriguing new work from Verso Books that seeks to explore the notion of class conflict and uprising through literature. The author is Dr Mark Steven of the clear about his own beliefs. His biography on the University of Exeter’s website claims he “makes no bones about the factthat this research is fuelled by political commitment.” All historical work, whether intentionally or not, is informed by personal bias. Yet occasionally, historical works can be dry and tedious, the authors afraid of letting any personal convictions come through. Even though Steven’s style is strictly academic in tone, his arguments are made with an informed vibrancy, instead of being analysed…

Anatomy Britain 1795 EPAULETTES In 1795 a major overhaul of British Naval uniforms took place. At this point epaulettes became a standard part of the officers' wear. Prior to this, some officers chose to wear them unofficially. Epaulette comes from an outdated French term for 'shoulder'. Over time they developed to be an insignia of rank. SABRE According to the National Portrait Gallery, most officers would have been armed with a short sword or cutlass. The long sabres often shown in portraits were purely ceremonial in nature. These were often highly decorative and would have been worn via a sword belt under the waistcoat and across the chest. RED OR BLUE? Naval uniforms were first introduced in 1748, at which point the decision was made by George II to make…

Q&A ALL ABOUT THE GEORGIANS What was the Grand Tour? What kind of person embarked on it? The Grand Tour is a term historians retrospectively apply to travel undertaken from the late 16th and early 17th century, and was not widely used by contemporaries until the middle of the 18th century. It really refers to an extended period of European travel usually associated with young men from the British upper-classes. On the tour they were expected to acquire taste, education, social experience and all the kinds of cultural capital that would make one qualified to be a member of the elite. Most of them would have had a travelling tutor whose role it was to provide education, a point of contact with the parents and to exercise restraint over the young…

EXPERT BIO ALISON WEIR Alison Weir is an author and the best-selling female historian in the UK. She has written extensively on Henry VIII and the Tudor Queens in both fiction and non-fiction genres. "I'm not sure that he did. He was usually pretty sure of himself, but he did acknowledge he had really bad faults and I think he was becoming reflective and he knew he didn't have long to live. One wonders whether he was looking at himself and taking stock. But his popularity endured, and therefore, I think he would have had a rather different view of himself than the way we think of him today. And in terms of today I think he's had bad press in many ways. Yes, he could be a monster. I'm…

ALL ABOUT THE GEORGIANS 1714 GEORGE I ASCENDS TO THE THRONE Queen Anne dies and the throne goes to George, the son of Sophia, Electress of Hanover. Despite the presence of numerous rivals for the throne, his ascendence marked the beginning of the Georgian era. George spoke only a little English and had to communicate with his ministers using French. GIN ACT 1751 Also known as the Tippling Act, this act was designed to limit the consumption of spirits, in particular gin. Some quarter of the houses in London during this time were suspected to have been gin shops. The availability of the cheap alcoholic beverage was deemed to have directly contributed to a rise in crime. THE BIRTH OF SATIRE C.1720 Thanks to the work of illustrators such as William Hogarth…

Places to Explore ALL ABOUT THE GEORGIANS GEORGIAN THEATRE ROYAL RICHMOND, NORTH YORKSHIRE Theatre was a popular pastime in the Georgian era, and in the market town of Richmond a Georgian theatre survives in its original form. The Georgian Theatre Royal was first built in 1788 by actor Samuel Butler and served a community of theatregoers until 1848 when the venue ceased to put on performances. The theatre's rectangular seating arrangements are characteristic of Georgian theatre architecture and allowed the audience to have a clear and unobstructed view of the stage. The Georgian Theatre Royal has a small capacity of only 154 seats, which means that the audience are never far away from the action. Visitors to the theatre can now enjoy this intimate experience by watching a show staged at…

CARDINAL THOMAS WOLSEY Thomas Wolsey rose through the ranks of the Catholic Church before becoming Henry VIII's most trusted advisor. In 1515 he was made Lord Chancellor of England and was gradually given more and more power by the king. Wolsey was charged by Henry with obtaining his divorce from the Pope but, already unpopular du to the vast wealth he had acquired, his influence dwindled when he was unsuccessful in his task. He was eventually arrested for treason in 1530 and died while on the way to face trial. THOMAS MORE A trained lawyer, Thomas More entered the service of the king in 1517 as his advisor and secretary. Also a great humanist scholar. More wrote many works including his most famous piece Utopia. He succeeded Wolsey as Lord…

The City Of Peace By 750, the Umayyad dynasty had expanded the Muslim Caliphate to its greatest limits - ruling over a realm twice the size of the Roman Empire at its peak, stretching from Spain to China. However, that year, the Umayyads were overthrown and slaughtered by the Abbasid dynasty who, rather than ruling from Damascus, decided to establish their very own capital. In 762, the Abbasid caliph picked a plot near the old Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon for a remarkably ambitious new city, a beating heart for the Islamic Golden Age to come. “China would send silk to be prepared and exported to the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, Russia, Samarkand and South East Asia” Named Madinat A1 Salam, or 'The City of Peace’, it was a perfectly circular metropolis,…

In San Francisco between 1968 and 1969, a mysterious figure, who referred to himself as the Zodiac killer, murdered at least five people. The Zodiac wrote a number of mocking letters to the police force and sent a series of mysterious cryptograms. Each of these was signed with the Zodiac's calling card, a circle and cross symbol, evocative of the telescopic sight on a rifle. Like the Phantom, the Zodiac killer was never caught. However, in the decades since theories began to emerge that perhaps the Zodiac and the Phantom were not two separate killers, but one and the same. These theories mostly stem from the exceedingly similar MO of both assailants. The Zodiac also targeted his victims on lovers' lanes and some sources state he used the same weapon…

1900 LABOUR NOT REQUIRED Had the Chartists been successful in their endeavours then some 60 years later it may not have been necessary to form the Labour Party. The need for drastic reform of working practices, pay and conditions, and the right of working people to vote and stand for election themselves, as well as trade unions, may well have already been dealt with by the National Charter Association in the middle of the 19th century. The earlier existence of a structured, organised and effective opposition party representing the majority of working people may have had a profound effect on politics and policy both at home and overseas. 1901 A SHRINKING CROWN The actions of more radical Chartists had rallied many against them. But with the ordinary working people given…

Author: Andrew Seaton Publisher: Yale University Press Price: £20 Released: 27 June 2023 From the outset, Andrew Seaton promises a from-the-inside-out perspective in this history of the NHS. As a result, we get to read about the experience of those in the service and those who used it. So, instead of a perspective that is constantly looking for signs of an NHS in decline or on the rise, we get a picture of a service that is taking on the totemic quality it still retains. Seaton rightly identifies that the NHS is at the centre of British identity and looks to pick apart why it should be so. As he explores this topic, we see that it is more than just the fact that it has touched the lives of just…

An insightful and personal discussion of Victorian child-bearing and motherhood Author: Jessica Cox Publisher: The History Press Price: £25 Released: 8 June 2023 "It is hard not to feel empathetic towards the women discussed in Confinement' In this much-needed and intriguing study of childbirth and motherhood in Victorian Britain, academic Jessica Cox explores themes including fertility, labour, child loss and midwifery through the use of newspapers, coroner's reports and hospital archives. The resources that make this book so compelling and personal, however, are the letters and diaries she has uncovered that provide a real insight into the lives of women in the 19th century. Identifiable figures like Queen Victoria, Charlotte Bronte and Mary Wollstonecraft are featured throughout but poorer women like labourers, maids, sex workers and those who ended up…