At 190, Jonathan the Tortoise Is the World’s Oldest: He will likely celebrate with some of his favorite activities: sunbathing, sleeping, eating, and mating:
"In spite of his age, Jonathan still has good libido and is seen frequently to mate with Emma and sometimes Fred - animals are often not particularly gender-sensitive"
In the case of the ( Read more... )

The Female Warrior: Cross-Dressing Naval Women: Queering the past becomes a problematic concept when assigning modern terms to people who we cannot ask, and for whom such vocabulary did not exist. Describing a woman as a “lesbian” who pursued an intimate female friendship during the 1800s, at a time when such friendships were encouraged in ( Read more... )

The V&A thing is even worse than originally reported: V&A to say goodbye to departments by material-woodwork, metalwork etc-and 20% of its curators: major and problematic upheavals with 'radical restructuring' and merging of departments, breaking with tradition: The “mother” of decorative art museums all over the world, the V&A was founded in 1852 ( Read more... )

This suburban house feels an odd place to find a modern-day literary superstar. It is my considered opinion that literary superstars were and are more likely to be found in suburban &/or provincial houses rather than trendy Hoxton (or equivalent) pads (do people say pad any more?). As opposed to wannabes and poseurs. Will, however, cop to ( Read more... )

You know that thing that only privileged middle-class women are historically supposed to have been interested in feminism, living alternative lifestyles, etc etc?

I give you Nellie Shaw, writing in 1932. Her mother kept a small draper's shop in Penge, a suburb in South London:
Becoming a strong suffragist and also socialist, I hated and abhorred ( Read more... )