All articles in Society & Culture
12th March, 2024 in Biography & Memoir, Society & Culture
Vanity Fair and trailblazing on Savile Row
One day, we got a phone call from Vanity Fair saying the photographer Michael Roberts would like to shoot us on Savile Row. Michael was something of a trailblazer himself. Only a couple of years earlier, he had shot Vivienne Westwood impersonating Margaret Thatcher for the cover…
7th March, 2024 in Society & Culture, Women in History
Daisy Hopkins: The prostitute who fought against being imprisoned by Cambridge University
Cambridge University is internationally renowned for its ancient colleges. It is lauded for its educational excellence. But in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, infamy blighted its hallowed name. As an alarming number of courtroom dramas exposed the university’s steadfa…
24th August, 2023 in Folklore, Natural World, Society & Culture
Stories about the starry night sky
The stars are our common heritage in the night sky, we are influenced by the portion of it that we see, and our stories create links between us as we realise our similarities and differences. When you look at the night sky – what do you see? Stars Stand there long enough and your…
10th August, 2023 in Natural World, Society & Culture
The meaning of ‘spice’
There is a need for definition, as spices have meant different things in different periods of history. ‘Spice’ is not a botanical term, but we can use botanical words to describe them. Today we might reasonably define a spice as the (usually) dried part of a plant used to season…
9th August, 2023 in History, Natural World, Society & Culture
Cats in the Roman world: The big and the small of it
Feles: a cat, a mouser, but also a thief. The eyes of nocturnal animals like cats gleam and shine in the dark. Pliny, Natural History IX.55 Excavated cat bones and cat images on vases and coins are proof that cats were padding about southern Italy at the end of the fifth century…
26th June, 2023 in Society & Culture, Women in History
Parliament’s working women: ‘Jane’ and the last days of Bellamy’s Refreshment Rooms
Necessary Women: the Untold Story of Parliament’s Working Women by Mari Takayanagi and Elizabeth Hallam Smith is the first book to tell the stories of women who worked in Parliament, from housekeepers and kitchen staff in the nineteenth century through to the first women Cle…
4th May, 2023 in History, Society & Culture, Women in History
Wealth, poverty, and childbirth in Victorian Britain
What was it like to give birth in Victorian Britain? Much depended, of course, on individual circumstances: health, wealth, social – including marital – status, and access to medical care. For the Queen for whom the period is named, childbirth was a painful, in some respects unwe…
18th April, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, History, Society & Culture
The Butcher of the Balkans: Andrija Artuković
Fate called Andrija Artuković out of exile, back to his homeland. It was time to start building the Croatia that he’d been fighting for his entire adult life. At the age of 41, Artuković was assigned an important post in Ante Pavelić’s new cabinet: Minister of the Interior, taske…
28th March, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Society & Culture, Women in History
Behind Mabel’s War: Beyond the Blitz
All wars devastate the lives of ordinary people. Death and glory linger on the battlefields while many millions at home suffer the pain of fear, anxiety and dread. As a war reporter, I have witnessed a great deal of anguish in the aftermath of conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and L…
8th March, 2023 in Folklore, Society & Culture, Women in History
Making ‘The Mighty Goddess’
The Mighty Goddess is a collection of 52 goddess myths from around the world written by me, Sally Pomme Clayton, with 52 papercuts created by artist and poet Sophie Herxheimer. My 40 year career as a writer and storyteller has focused on female protagonists and goddesses. And ove…
23rd February, 2023 in History, Society & Culture, True Crime
How a story of Ethiopian plunder started in a Scottish cupboard
My book was born on a cold winter afternoon when a train pulled into Edinburgh’s Waverley Station. Out walked a group of black-robed priests, led by the archbishop of the ancient Ethiopian city of Axum. Close behind came diplomats, officials, a delegation of Rastafarians from the…
1st February, 2023 in Society & Culture
10 LGBTQ+ history icons you may not have heard of
June marks the beginning of Pride month, a month-long celebration and recognition of the LGBTQ+ community, the history and future of gay rights and relevant civil rights movements. To commemorate this, we’re highlighting some people throughout history that may not be as well know…