Mistresses: Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II, written by historian Linda Porter and published by Picador in 2020, is the second book on the Stuarts of the seventeenth century by Dr Porter, the first being, Royal Renegades: The Children of Charles I and the English Civil Wars. Porter previously wrote several books on Tudor history,… Read on
Author John Pilkington (@_JohnPilkington) writes about the colourful and seedy side of Covent Garden in the 17th Century.
1. Nell experimented with cross-dressing. Between 1663 and 1667 she posed under the name “William Nell” and adopted a false beard. The disguise stood her in good stead when she needed to act as a man on the stage in March 1667, and we know from Pepys’ diary that he found her performance the best he’d ever seen. 2.… Read on
Entertaining Mr Pepys is the third and final chapter of Deborah Swift’s trilogy on that most famous naval administrator/diarist of the late seventeenth century: Samuel Pepys. That said, it can be read as a standalone work – although I read the first book in the series, I wasn’t able to read the second one, but that did not… Read on
Pleasing Mr Pepys is the newest work by Deborah Swift and set to release this September (2017), and I was fortunate to have been given an advance review copy. To me, Swift brought Deborah Willet, the Pepyses, and the London of the 1660s to life in an exciting and sometimes touching way. I found this to be a really enjoyable story, with its various… Read on
After our stay at the Stonehenge campsite last Autumn, Gavin and I made our way to Marlborough, which is a lovely town in Wiltshire, England. This amazing house was built for and lived in by a wealthy seventeenth-century silk merchant named Thomas Bayly. The construction is believed to date from between 1653 and 1700, and the interiors have… Read on
I came across this book by chance in a Waterstones bookshop in Blackpool late last month, and I was so taken by the opening page (which is what I always read before deciding upon a book. I don’t care about a book cover or the blurb – I like to decide for myself with the writing itself), that… Read on
I first started my love affair with the Royal Navy of the latter half of the seventeenth century during my second year of University. As a Christmas present that year, my friend Pippa presented me with Arthur Herman’s To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World. [amazon asin=0060534257&template=image&chan=default] This book fascinated me, and inspired… Read on