Blog
The tears of the Huguenots: a virtual tour of Wandsworth on 18 February
If you live in London, you’ve probably driven through Wandsworth, cursing its one-way systems, staring at its dull architecture and nasty shop-fronts as you wait for the traffic to move, without ever seeing the signs of the Huguenots. Even on a walk through its...
Promotion – excellent pay, good prospects and a company horse
Guest blog: Author Ann Vinden is currently writing a biography set in Chile during the nitrate extraction period. She writes here about horses, class and family. No-one would have suggested learning to ride a horse as a means of independence in the shire counties...
To be disreputable, disrespectful, disobedient
Sarah Perry’s latest publication, “Essex Girls: For Profane and Opinionated Women Everywhere”, is a tiny little book based on a Harriet Martineau lecture she gave; it’s an entertaining read for any woman who doesn’t like to shut up. Sarah Perry is best known for her...
An excellent gift for the Vicar
Bah Humbug is one response to Christmas, exemplified by Dr Seuss’ The Grinch. In 1644 Parliament was peopled with Puritan Grinches, and their declaration cancelling Christmas has now been reproduced on a tea towel. Clearly these were not populists, appealing to the...
“A huge, heavy galleon of white Portland stone…”
“…anchored among the red-brick Queen Anne houses of the weavers.” So John Betjeman described Christ Church, Spitalfields, in The Collins Guide to English Parish Churches. The Grade I listed church was built following an Act of Parliament in 1711, which legislated for...
“When I bestride him, I soar, I am a hawk: he trots the air; the earth sings when he touches it…”
I have my criticisms of my mother, and in many ways she was an abomination, but she did make sure I learnt to swim, and – more unusually – to ride. My sister and I were horse fanatics. Our riding lessons involved a long, meandering bus ride through the lanes of...
Joe Robinette Biden: Hey Joe, is that a Huguenot name there?
Joe Biden’s middle name, Robinette, is enough to make any Huguenot researcher’s ears twitch; and, quick as a flash on his victory, Facebook group Huguenot Heritage claimed him. Biden himself has been self-effacing about his ancestry: “It’s my grandmother Biden’s...
Slavery, statuary and Huguenot villainry
Thanks to Black Lives Matter and the toppling of a Bristol statue, I’ve just found out about the part a number of Huguenots played in the transatlantic slave trade. All that Bible reading did such Huguenots no good when it came to the lives of stolen Africans. We all...
In the secret places of the heart: The Mirror And The Light
It was comforting to slide back into the familiar mind of Thomas Cromwell as imagined by Hilary Mantel. If you haven’t tackled Mantel’s Tudor trilogy, it’s a very apt project for the lockdown – three enormous tomes, all of them quite hard work, all worth the...
The other side of the tracks
Sarah is 80 this year. She idolised my mum who, admittedly, was good with small children not her own. In any case, this was in the years when my mum was a Sunday School teacher and must have had child-amusing tricks up her sleeve. Sarah is one of my long-lost cousins...
For God’s sake: the things they do to you
Biographer Monique Goodliffe reviews the novel “Women Talking” by Miriam Toews in an important guest blog on fundamentalism and the treatment of women. In a remote part of Bolivia, many girls and women woke up in the morning...
Making musical clocks in Blackfriars
A Protestant-made timepiece was chosen by historian Neil MacGregor to be one of twenty British Museum objects which best illustrate Shakespeare’s life and the background for his plays. The rare musical clock, created by highly-skilled Flemish Protestant refugee...
