5th May 2015
(Cloudscape over the Thames, 04-05-15) I’ve been listening to George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier on my daily walks recently. Something that he wrote reminded me of the tendency of big events to overshadow everyday history. He was, he pointed out, visiting Yorkshire in 1936 when Adolf Hitler ordered his troops into the...
more17th Apr 2015
This post is part of this reading project. (Plot spoilers ahoy) At last I’m writing up the first book in this project. At 700 pages long Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White is the kind of sprawling Victorian novel that I rarely get around to. But it was on the reading list of an evening course I recently did at the Bishopsgate...
more9th Feb 2015
Devon, 8/9 February 1855 Of all the strange weather stories I have read about over the last few years, I remember that of the Devil’s Footprints above all. It happened exactly 160 years ago, on the night of 8 February 1855. It is a mystery of Sherlockian proportions. It remains unsolved to this day. The start of 1855 was...
more7th Feb 2015
![Historical Miscellany #36 - A Roast Dinner Cooked on the Ice over the River Exe [1855]](http://peter-moore.co.uk/wp-content/themes/petermoore/thumb.php?src=http://peter-moore.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Skating-on-the-Serpentine-940x626.jpg&h=304&w=710&zc=1&q=90 "Historical Miscellany #36 - A Roast Dinner Cooked on the Ice over the River Exe [1855]")
(From The Royal Cornwall Gazette, Falmouth Packet, and General Advertiser, 23 February 1855) A singular occurrence in gastronomic science was tried on Tuesday week, on the ice in the centre of the River Exe, at St Thomas. The severity of the frost having coated the surface of the river with a thick crust of ice, capable of...
more5th Feb 2015
I spent every other childhood holiday on the east Yorkshire coast visiting family. I've long wanted to go back and take a decent photograph of Filey Bay - the syrupy morning light, the vast skies reflecting in puddles on the sand (which is especially suited for cricket) - and I was happy to get this on Tuesday morning. It's been...
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