The Wellington Exhibition

Updated on November 3, 2014 by Diane Gaston

At Stratfield Saye, the Duke of Wellington’s country house, the stables are turned into a museum showing artifacts from the Duke’s life.

The star of the exhibit is, of course, the Victorianly-excessive funeral carriage.

But there were other pieces, too.

Wellington’s umbrella with a steel spike used in 1830 during the Reform Bill Riots when Wellington was not very popular with the citizenry.

A dispatch bag belonging to Joseph Bonaparte’s treasurer captured after the Battle of Vitoria

A caricature

A feed bag

Record of feeding of horses (Copenhagen is listed)

Photograph of footmen in livery

Omigosh, that livery looks dreadful! Not at all like handsome Thomas from Downton Abbey

(Not that any Regency footman would be dressed as Thomas!)

Can you tell I’m still missing England?

Posted in Risky Regencies | 9 Replies

Fall Back in Time!

Updated on October 31, 2014 by Elena Greene

As Sandy mentioned earlier, The Historical Romance Network is celebrating historical romance with a special event. Today, authors and readeres are posting selfies taken with romance novels, using the hashtag #FallBackinTime.

So in no particular order, here we are!

Sandy, with The Wastrel by Margaret Moore.

Elena, with The Captain’s Dilemma by Gail

Carolyn of the Awesome Hair, with Rogue Spy by Joanna Bourne.

Myretta, with The Last Hellion by Loretta Chase

Gail, with Fly with a Rogue by Elena

and Diane, who couldn’t pick just one!

Feel free to join the Fall Back in Time event and post your own selfie wherever you’d like. Help historical romance trend by using the hashtag #FallBackinTime.

The Risky Regencies

Ghosts and Witches in the UK

Updated on October 31, 2014 by Elena Greene

Since my blogging day has fallen on Halloween, I’ll do my best to get into the spirit of things. (Get that? “Spirit”? Feel free to groan!)

I checked out the Internet and found many suggestions for “10 Most Haunted whatever”. Here are a few.

Listverse’s Top 10 Most Haunted Places (anywhere) has the following in the United Kingdom: Borley Rectory, Raynham Hall in Norfolk, where this famous ghost lady picture was taken, the Tower of London and Edinborough Castle.

Lists for the top 10 in the UK vary. Interestingly, Raynham Hall didn’t appear on either of the lists I checked. Haunted Rooms’ Top 10 Haunted Places in England lists the following places: Borley Rectory, Ancient Ram Inn, Pendle Hill, Berry Pomeroy Castle, Woodchester Mansion, Pluckley Village, Athelhampton House, Tower of London, Salmesbury Hall, Chillingham Castle. Visit Britain’s Top 10 Most Haunted Places lists Highgate Cemetery, Borley Rectory, Pendle Hill, Red Lion in Avebury, Ancient Ram Inn, Glamis Castle, Tower of London, Culloden Moor, Llancaiach Fawr Manor, Berry Pomeroy Castle.

Borley Rectory seems to always hit every list. I’d already read tales of the hauntings, supposedly due to a monk from a monastery that had existed on the site falling in love with a nun. According to the story, he was executed and she was bricked up alive within the convent walls. According to the Haunted Legend of Borley Rectory, this legend has no historical basis. However, there were strange incidents, reports of ghost carriages, an apparition that could have been a nun. However, there’s also some suspicion that a paranormal researcher, Harry Price, faked the phenomena he reported, and also that a subsequent resident, Marianne Foyster, may have faked paranormal activity to cover up her affair with a lodger.

Here’s an image of a purported ghost sighting at Borley.

Another of the places that seems to hit a lot of the lists is Pendle Hill, around which 12 women who in 1612 were tried and hanged as witches in what became known as the Lancashire Witch Trials. Check out this Youtube video to learn more. Given the superstitious nature of the time when these hangings occurred, some are now urging for these women to be pardoned.

The legend of the Lancashire Witches forms some of the backstory for Lucy in Disguise by Lynn Kerstan, one of the Regencies in the ebook set Regency Masquerades. The set also includes the RITA-winning Gwen’s Ghost, co-authored by Lynn Kerstan and Alicia Rasley.

Regency Masquerades will be on sale for 99 cents only for a few more days, so if you’re interested, buy it now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks and Kobo.

What ghost or witch stories or haunted places do you find the most interesting?

Wishing you a happy Halloween!

Elena

www.elenagreene.com

Posted in History | Tagged Borley Rectory, ghosts, halloween, Lancashire Witches, Pendle Hill, Raynham Hall, witches | Leave a reply

Thoughts on Death Comes To Pemberley

Updated on October 29, 2014 by Janet Mullany

Yes, I enjoyed it but let me quibble. Because what else is blogging for? I loved Anna Maxwell Martin in The Bletchley Circle where she played a smart woman trapped by domesticity who brought her formidable intelligence to solving a mystery … oh. I see what they did there. Never mind. But Lizzie? Fine eyes and all that? There was some sweet lovie-dovey stuff with Darcy in the beginning (were they really planning an afternoon bedroom tryst or just planning to meet for a nice cup of tea?). After that she seemed to treat him like a large, unpredictable dog, lots of pats on the shoulder and consolatory treats for the Great Darcy.

No, really, the cast were all fine, although Sir Selwyn Hardcastle’s (Trevor Eve) facial hair scared me a little but I’ll get over it. The trouble is, that the depiction of well-meaning people doing their best to behave well can be rather tedious TV, which is why Lydia (Jenna Coleman, and OMG that military hat and jacket) stole the show: all that screaming and swooning and deshabille made for a lot of fun. She even upstaged Mrs. Bennet.

But this is a series where everyone is upstaged by the settings. Ooh boy. Pemberley is depicted by Castle Howard and Chatsworth House. Here is the Antiques Passage at Howard, where various characters stride. It is a space that demands striding. And here are Lizzy and Darcy in Chatsworth House:

Quite a lot of the interiors were from Chatsworth, including the Turquoise Room:

Hardcastle Crags in Yorkshire were used for the woodland and waterfall. In real life, the stepping stones across the stream lead to somewhere completely different, Stang End Cottage at the Ryedale Folk Museum in Yorkshire, a reconstructed early eighteenth century moor cottage. And I cannot resist pointing out that the Museum is at a place called Hutton-le-Hole.

Altogether I thought it was an excellent example of better TV from an indifferent book, and the producers certainly worked hard to make it entertaining and, I think, historically correct. What did you think of Episode I?

Filming at Chatsworth

Posted in Jane Austen, TV and Film | Tagged Death Comes To Pemberley | 7 Replies

Historical Selfies

Updated on October 29, 2014 by Sandra Schwab

This week, I’m going to start with:

HALP!!!!!!

This Saturday is the #FallBackInTime event on Twitter, Facebook, and what not, where your favorite romance authors (and we hope, you, too!) will post a selfie with their first or favorite historical romance novel. And so far, my selfies all ended up looking really dreadful. (More suitable for Halloween, really…)

Selfies are, of course, nothing new. Back in the day before smartphones & cameras they were called self-portraits (and they tended to look fab!) (oh well, but then we typcially only get to see the self-portraits of, you know, real artists instead of those done by amateurs). Some of them are very serious (and done in oil), others are far more cheeky – and naturally, self-portraits by the artists of Punch tend to fall into the latter category.

One of my favorite staff portraits in the magazine itself is the border for the preface to volume 7 from 1844. It was done by Richard Doyle and shows the writers and artists bringing their offerings to Mr. Punch:

Between Mr. Punch and Toby, his dog, you can see Mark Lemon, the editor, and (I think) one of the publishers, while behind Toby the artists and writers are queuing and waiting to hand over their work. The short guy at the front is probably John Leech, followed by Thackeray (tall + curls + small, round spectacles = super-easy to recognize!) and, at the far end of the queue, by Dicky Doyle himself, holding a gigantic pencil.

Kinda cute, isn’t it?

Well, the same cannot be said about my own selfies, I’m afraid, even though I have a smartphone with a camera and don’t even have to sketch my portrait. But…

Well…

The second attempt turned out even worse:

And the third attempt… At least I managed to keep my eyes open. That’s progress, right???

But still not particularly, er, nice. *sigh*

So I’m coming to you, hoping that you might have some tips for me how to improve my selfie-taking skills before this weekend so that I won’t end up traumatizing the rest of the world with my truly bad selfies. HALP!!!!!

And, of course, I hope you’ll join us on Saturday for the #FallBackInTime event and post your own selfies with historicals that you particularly enjoyed or that started your love affair with the genre. 🙂

Posted in Reading | Tagged Fall Back in Time, Historical Romance Network, Punch, Sandra Schwab, Selfies gone wrong | 4 Replies