All articles in Biography & Memoir
9th April, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, Military
The Twins: The SOE’s brothers of vengeance
With the Germans having moved into Lyon, things felt very different to how they had been before. It would take a while for everything to settle down in the city and so the Twins decided the best thing to do for now was to go to Le Puy. It was November 1942. Brothers Alfred and He…
26th February, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, History
Six things you (probably) didn’t know about Edward VI
Considering his desperation for a male heir, it’s rather ironic that it’s Henry VIII’s daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, we know best. His only legitimate son to survive infancy, Edward VI, became king at nine years old and died when he was only 15. Here are six things you migh…
12th February, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, Natural World
A pig called Alice
To call Alice ‘just another pig’ would be the gravest insult. She was far removed from the ordinary, the common-or-garden, the routine. She had qualities that elevated her above the common- place members of that species. All pigs are special, as those who have kept them will tell…
30th January, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
Ask the author: Julia Abel Smith on Lady Augusta Murray
Prince Augustus Frederick, George III’s sixth son, caused a royal scandal when he married Lady Augusta Murray in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act 1772. Upon the couple’s eventual split, Augusta went from socialite to social outcast and has been largely forgotten by histor…
29th January, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, History, Women in History
The forbidden marriage of Lady Augusta Murray
In the evening of 4 April 1793, preparations were being made for a clandestine ceremony in Rome. The wedding of the son of the King of England to the daughter of the Governor of the Bahamas would not only be concealed, it would also be illegal. That night His Royal Highness Princ…
28th January, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, Society & Culture, Women in History
Flirting with fascism: Lady Houston and Oswald Mosley
In the mid-1930s Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was going from strength to strength and in 1934 it had 40,000 members. Those who were tired of the economic and political stagnation of interwar Britain were attracted by Mosley’s nationalistic messages such as ‘Our first…
13th January, 2020 in Biography & Memoir, Women in History
Seven things you (probably) didn’t know about Anne Brontë
January 17 2020 was a special day for lovers of English literature – as it marked the 200th birthday of Anne Brontë. The youngest of the Brontë sisters, Anne was caught for a while in the shadow of her illustrious sisters Charlotte and Emily Brontë but she is finally being recogn…
27th November, 2019 in Biography & Memoir, History
Why was Edward VIII’s abdication a necessity?
The conventional story of why Edward VIII came to abdicate in 1936 is well known and hardly needs any detailed rehearsal. The King abandoned the throne because he was determined on marrying the American divorcée Wallis Simpson, ‘the woman I love’, a union rejected by the politica…
23rd October, 2019 in Biography & Memoir, History, Women in History
Ask the author: Gemma Hollman on Royal Witches
When we think of witch trials throughout British history, it’s usually James VI and I or Matthew Hopkins who come to mind. Historian Gemma Hollman, however, proves that women were also subjected to accusations of witchcraft in medieval England in her book, Royal Witches – of…
11th October, 2019 in Biography & Memoir, History, Women in History
Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace: The computer’s most passionate partnership
Is it really possible to imagine what life was like in the nineteenth century? I’m not sure it is: biographers are ultimately limited to taking a perspective on the past from their own contemporary position. They need to do their best to try to get into, and interpret, the mindse…
21st August, 2019 in Biography & Memoir, Society & Culture, Women in History
Medicine’s anti-thalidomide heroine
Dr Frances Kelsey, a doctor who was born in Canada but subsequently gained United States citizenship, is one of the heroines of the history of medicine. In early September 1960, while Frances was working at the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) she was given, as a…
19th August, 2019 in Biography & Memoir, Maritime
The elusive Henry Every
In 1695 Henry Every, a thirty-six-year-old master mariner from the south coast of Devon, led one of the most powerful pirate crews in history on a short but spectacularly successful cruise in the Red Sea. Their capture of the Grand Moghul’s ship the Gang-i-Sawai was one of the mo…