Welcome to Biltmore, the spectacular home of the Vanderbilts in Asheville, North Carolina – although it may seem hard to imagine this fairy-tale mansion as a family home, when it has a total of 250 rooms! Ready to see inside? It’s even more impressive than the French chateau-inspired exterior suggests… Here is one of my…
Continue reading ➞ Visiting Biltmore, the North Carolina home of the Vanderbilts
Happy New Year! And as well, happy new decade! I’m excited to get researching and blogging for the year and have lots of ideas – but I wanted to start off the year by looking back at some of my favourite historical sites I’ve visited in 2019… Jane Austen House Museum, Chawton I’ve loved Jane…
So two weeks ago, we swapped Sheffield and the UK for Savannah, Georgia, and the US. We’ve moved for my fiancé’s job and I’m going to spend the first couple of months finishing off my PhD. This move has been a long time in the making and with that, packing up our flat and trying…
London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company, Portrait of Lola Montez, unknown date. Scottish National Portrait Gallery, PGP 837.28. Today I wanted to write about a female figure in history who completely fascinates me: Lola Montez. I first heard about Lola Montez in a song (a fantastic song you can find here) by Volbeat, and after listening…
Continue reading ➞ Lola Montez: The Fascinating Life of a Queen of Reinvention (1821-1861)
Even though I wax lyrical on every single platform about how much I love Jane Austen, I’ve never visited her house at Chawton or her grave in Winchester Cathedral – until this week. We went on a lovely trip to Hampshire and had a beautiful day (helped by the British sunshine) exploring Jane Austen’s House…
Continue reading ➞ Walking in the footsteps of Jane Austen in Hampshire
A few weeks ago we went for a weekend in Budapest and I came away feeling like Budapest is one of the prettiest cities I’ve ever visited. So many of the buildings could be right out of a fairy tale, and the history of the city is also really interesting. It was a wonderful place…
Ever wondered what Rome was like in the eighteenth century, in the age of Grand Tourists, endless art shopping and constant archaeological excavation? Well here are the adventures of Henrietta Femor, the Countess of Pomfret, who took to the continent with her husband and two eldest daughters from 1738 to 1741. Henrietta detailed all of…
Continue reading ➞ A Wander round Eighteenth-Century Rome with a Georgian Lady
