Culture

  • Discover Jane Austen’s London with a Historic Walking Tour (with me!)

    Discover Jane Austen’s London with a Historic Walking Tour (with me!)

    Happy Friday and I hope you are having a wonderful new year! I am really excited to share a project I’ve been working on for a little while – that has perfect timing to celebrate Jane Austen’s 250th birthday this year. I’d like to invite you to come and discover Jane Austen’s London with a read more

  • “Widow Clicquot” Review for BSECS Criticks

    “Widow Clicquot” Review for BSECS Criticks

    You might remember that earlier this year, I shared this post about the fascinating life of Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot, the Widow Clicquot who revolutionised the Clicquot champagne house to be the Veuve Clicquot it is world-renowned as today. Well, I am very happy to share a review I wrote of that film for BSECS Criticks read more

  • New Podcast | Past Matters, “The Queen of the Bluestockings”

    New Podcast | Past Matters, “The Queen of the Bluestockings”

    Hello! I recently had a wonderful chat with the lovely Ploy Radford of the Past Matters Podcast about one of my favourite eighteenth century women, Elizabeth Montagu. Montagu was the so-called Queen of the Bluestocking Circle, a group of intellectuals – both men and women! – who often met in her London home. You can read more

  • A Classical Landscape at Stourhead

    A Classical Landscape at Stourhead

    Visiting the gardens at the sprawling estate of Stourhead, Wiltshire, is like walking into a Claude Lorrain painting, or some kind of fantastical neoclassical, Grand Tour dream. In fact, Henry Hoare I, who first acquired the Stourhead estate for his family in 1717 (then known as Stourton Manor) owned a Lorrain painting, Aeneas at Delos. read more

  • Introducing debutantes at Queen Charlotte’s Ball

    Introducing debutantes at Queen Charlotte’s Ball

    Thomas Gainsborough, Queen Charlotte, Met Museum. You may have noticed, if you have immersed yourself in the Regency fantasy world of Bridgerton recently, that each series begins with the presentation of society’s debutantes to Queen Charlotte. Young ladies queue up in white dresses, escorted to the Queen, where they curtsey and are examined by the read more

  • Visiting Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

    Visiting Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens

    One of my favourite things to read about in eighteenth and nineteenth century history is how, and where, people spent their free time. The eighteenth century saw a real change in the development of leisure and pleasure, especially for the elite, which meant the arrival of more cultural institutions and places to satisfy these needs. read more

  • Adapting Jane Austen | My Top 10 “Pride and Prejudice” Adaptations

    Adapting Jane Austen | My Top 10 “Pride and Prejudice” Adaptations

    It’s 207 years today since Jane Austen passed away, so, in her honour, it’s time to talk about the best adaptations of her work: specifically, my favourite of all her novels, Pride and Prejudice. I don’t want to ignite the Darcy debate, but I have to list some of my favourite – and some of read more

  • Attending a Ball in Regency England

    Attending a Ball in Regency England

    If you could time travel to Regency England, what better way to spend a Saturday night than at a ball? (My dream, really!) If you were attending, you would arrive late in the evening: if you think we head out dancing late now, that has always been the case, with the earliest arrivals coming at read more

  • Marie-Antoinette’s biggest fan: Empress Eugénie

    Marie-Antoinette’s biggest fan: Empress Eugénie

    Fewer women have captured cultural imagination like Marie-Antoinette. Her fascination endures today, and it did so almost immediately after her death in the French revolution. And one of her biggest fans, who sat at the helm of cult-like adoration for who they saw as a martyr queen, was Empress Eugénie. Empress Eugénie was born in read more

  • What is a Cabinet of Curiosity?

    What is a Cabinet of Curiosity?

    One of my favourite things that I spotted in the second half of the third season of Bridgerton was the presence of cabinets of curiosity in Penelope and Colin’s sitting room. It seems the perfect set addition for our intrepid and intellectually engaged couple (I tried to find a still of the set, but couldn’t!): read more

Subscribe

Enter your email below to receive updates.