Augusta Fells Savage, a talented sculptor who had faced obstacles due to her sex and race at every turn: [L]ittle of Savage's work survives today. Because she couldn't afford bronze, she often had to make her sculptures out of plaster; most of these have crumbled over time. Other works, like The Harp, were destroyed because they could not be moved ( Read more... )

I'm currently reading Sybil Oldfield's The Black Book: The Britons on the Nazi Hitlist (2020) and imagine my astonishment when I came across the name of George Orwell and it was not emboldened (all the names of individuals and organisations which appeared in the Book are emboldened in the text).
Yes, apparently George was not considered anything ( Read more... )

And they are 'unexamined-assumptions' and 'facile-preconceptions'.
Because, really, there are a lot of these among people who should really know better, such as women who write and review books about women and the sea: Salt on Your Tongue: Women and the Sea by Charlotte Runcie - review.
Which includes the memorable claim: In the way of generations ( Read more... )

Article about Vera Brittain, or, really, about Testament of Youth (coming shortly to a cinema near you).
I have, my dearios will doubtless recall, expatiated heretofore on my own problems with Vera, as in, the more one learns about her the less one tends to like her (okay, I am Team Winifred all the way).
I find it really problematic the way in ( Read more... )

In This much I know: Famous people share their life lessons in today's Observer Magazine, David Bailey avers:
My greatest fear is that my dick will drop off. It's every man's worst nightmare if they're honest.

(Makes one wonder if the 60s jingle 'David Bailey/Makes love daily' was to ascertain that it was still attached...)

I'm intrigued that his ( Read more... )

Another television drama I have no desire to watch
Presumably somewhere out there are people writing serious contemporary dramas that do not feature the maiming and murder of women. Good luck to them, you have to say, because what chance does their work stand of ever seeing the green light of commission ( Read more... )

Another church: St Martin in the Fields. (What fields? there are no fields, and prob haven't been for quite a long time.)

It's an admirable example of early C18th church architecture by James Gibbs, much copied in North America.

It does important social and humanitarian outreach work, e.g. with the homeless, and is the church for the London Chinese ( Read more... )

Today's ODNB Life of the Day is Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, who (along with her husband) ticks a lot of 'srsly ok person' boxes:
It was the start of an unusual lifelong partnership in which each annexed the surname of the other, while each retained separate bank accounts and considerable autonomy within a marriage whose harmony was much advertised ( Read more... )

I'n currently boggling at the suggestion that I might like the new offical bio of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother -

Wait for it -

Because you purchased Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love.

Carpenter - you know, the gay pacifist socialist simple-lifer anti-imperialist?

Or are there people who 'read biography' and it doesn't much matter of ( Read more... )

Elected silence: When her marriage ended, Sara Maitland found herself enjoying the lack of noise. But gradually an addiction to silence turned into a craving for the hermit's life ... (I declare an interest: I have always been a fan of Maitland's fiction). Though
I now believe that the determining factor in whether a silence ends up feeling ( Read more... )