Category: Uncategorized

Having read Mary Hollingsworth’s new release, ‘The Borgias: History’s most notorious dynasty’ we are inspired to share with you how this family managed to achieve such a reputation. The saying goes that you can’t choose your family, and thank god, as i wouldn’t choose to be part of the Borgia clan. From deceit and treachery to sordid incestual…

Source: no1royalcrescent.org.uk Imagine stepping through a door that will take you back in time. Where would you go? What would you see? Well, on the 21st June 2013 that is exactly what you will be able to do at No.1, The Royal Crescent. Historical Honey was recently invited to take a tour of the museum, now in its…

In the mid-1850s, thousands of hopeful and often desperate people signed up for seasickness, squalor, and hardship for the chance of a new life. Thanks to the Australian and American Gold Rushes, emigration was touted as the solution to overcrowding, ill health, and a lack of marriage prospects and money in the newspapers and town…

Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park was published 200 years ago, in May 1814. It contains a good deal about the Royal Navy, as does Persuasion, which was published soon after her death. Roy and Lesley Adkins are authors of Eavesdropping on Jane Austen’s England and Jack Tar, and here they consider why Jane Austen knew so much about the navy and whether she…

Sitting down to read ‘Who Killed William Shakespeare: The Murderer. The Motive. The Means’, it occurred to me that I really didn’t know much about the man. Yes he wrote plays, was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon and married a woman called Anne Hathaway, but that was about it. I felt a little ignorant to be honest, considering he is known…

My mum (an English graduate) heaped a pile of books in my lap one day, including classic novels such as I Capture The Castle and Franny and Zooey, and declared “all young women should read these books”.  She then demanded to know why I had never read Madame Bovary. I explained that I had been far too busy…

If you are anything of a historical novel buff, then you are probably already familiar with Kate Furnivall’s ‘The Jewel of St Petersburg’ and ‘The Russian Concubine’. As fabulous as I think those novels are, and they will definitely get their own review at a later date, I wanted to give this novel a particular mention.  The…

Each and everyone of us needs food to survive although some of us take the appreciation of this necessity to a level far beyond mere sustenance. For all their high brow intellect and unconventional lifestyles the Bloomsbury group were as fond of food and eating as many of us are today. Their love of food…

Franklin D. Roosevelt once said “happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort”. If this quote is anything to go by, Jane and Mary Parminter must have been extremely happy! A la Ronde was built for the two spinster cousins on their return from a grand tour of Europe, in…

Isabella of France is a B.A. (Hons) Babe of History. She was the daughter, sister, and mother of Kings of England and France, and also the daughter of  Queen Joan of Navarre. She was said to be as beautiful as her father, Philip the Fair, but was wise and tenacious as both her parents. A…