Category Archives: History

The Lord Mayor’s Show

Posted on 15/11/2015 by carolinemmurray

Him Indoors was let out today (14 November) because he has a ticket for the Lord Mayor’s Show. For us non-Londoners, this is an event which falls sometime between Guy Fawkes and Advent, stops all the traffic in London, and … Continue reading →

Posted in History, London | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Ghostly Vegetables (Part 2)

Posted on 09/11/2015 by carolinemmurray

Returning to the remarkable plant portraits of late Victorian gardener Charles Jones, I thought I would look at the varieties he photographed, and see whether any of those that he named still exist. (There are some generic labels, such as … Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Gardens, History, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Deluge of Time

Posted on 06/11/2015 by carolinemmurray

‘Antiquities, or remnants of history, are, as was said, tanquam tabula naufragii: when industrious persons, by an exact and scrupulous diligence and observation, out of monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of books … Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliography, History, Literature, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Apples

Posted on 26/10/2015 by carolinemmurray

Upon St Crispin’s Day, what better way to celebrate England than to go to the Apple Day at Cambridge University Botanic Garden? For the second time, I had the fun of being a helper, slicing fruit for tasting, and bagging … Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Cambridge, Gardens, History | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Veiling

Posted on 20/10/2015 by carolinemmurray

What do we mean by it? I was catching up recently with Amanda Foreman’s ‘The Ascent of Woman’, and was very disconcerted by two things in particular: firstly, the sudden leap (à propos ancient oppression of women) from the Assyrian … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, History | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

Posted on 16/10/2015 by carolinemmurray

Disambiguation, as they say on Wikipedia. This is not about the novel by the great Kate Atkinson (another Jackson Brodie! Soon! PLEASE!), but about the usually scruffy, draughty, unkempt warrens which tend to lurk behind many of our great national … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Printing With Muscles

Posted on 12/10/2015 by carolinemmurray

Some months ago, I saw advertised – on Twitter, I think – a one-day course on printing on a wooden press (of the type Gutenberg would have used, it is thought), run by the Dürer Press Group, at the St … Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliography, History, Literature, London, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , , | 12 Comments

Copy-Editing

Posted on 10/10/2015 by carolinemmurray

This title immediately raises issues. If the first part of a two-word hyphenated phrase requires a capital, should the second part also be capitalised? I think it should, because ‘Copy-editing’ looks unbalanced to me, but on the other hand, if … Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliography, Cambridge, History | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

St Helena

Posted on 06/10/2015 by carolinemmurray

I say St Helena, you say Napoleon, or possibly vice versa. It’s undoubtedly the case that this tiny and remote island is most famous because of its reluctant and ex-imperial guest between 1815 and his death in 1821. Large numbers … Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, Cambridge, Gardens, History, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Manila

Posted on 30/09/2015 by carolinemmurray

I was reading a novel the other day in which mention was made of ‘a blue manila folder’. This brought me up short, because surely manila is (a) an envelope and (b) the substance for which the adjective ‘buff-coloured’ was … Continue reading →

Posted in Botany, History | Tagged , , | 2 Comments