And so it begins!

BANISHED
BBC Two
Thursday, 5 March, 9pm
In his latest TV drama Banished, writer Jimmy McGovern tells a brutal story about the first British convicts to be transported to Australia.

Read more here!


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I’m still waiting for something to even remotely provide me with the entertainment and delight of Garrow’s Law and the handsomeness that’s Andrew Buchan (and no, neither “Call the Midwife”, “Downton Abbey” nor “Mrs Brown’s Boys” will do, thank you very much), but at least there is a faint light on the TV horizon for 2015 for us aficionados of ( Read more... )

Pardon the pun, but I couldn’t resist when coming across this snuff box on the Antiques Roadshow.


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Antiques Roadshow goes Games of Thrones…

This is where the well-heeled Georgian family would have placed their little prince or princess for supper - it’s a miniature late Regency/Georgian dining chair! Made of Mahogany in ca. 1830, this children chair allowed for catapulting porridge and cooked liver all over the dining room from a prominent ( Read more... )

Seeing how Easter is just around the corner, a Fabergé egg might have been more suitable to turn up on the Antiques Roadshow, but I thought that you’ll be just as happy with Nelson’s teapot. And it’s the real thing!


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Leadsinger of a grunge band?
Picture of young Marcello Mastroianni?
Boss model?


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Probably not, but you could have bought this outstanding - stop chuckling! - piece twelve years ago from Christie’s.


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After the finding-royals-under-the-car-park fad, we now have the give-history-a-make-over craze.

Historical hipsters: Shakespeare and Elizabeth I get makeovers from modern artistsI admit, seeing “Elizabeth I” and “hipster” in one sentence is painful; Shakespeare, however ( Read more... )

While the focus of this blog is on all things 18th century, with emphasis on the Royal Navy, I sometimes come across something which is either so bizarre (the Battle for the Eternal Light, for example!) or awesome that I stretch the timeframe a little. In any case, this is still Age of Sail, though thoroughly not sailing related ( Read more... )

Today I’m writing about something I don’t actually know much about: national dresses. Or rather, cantonal dresses, as we’ll be talking about Switzerland. Each canton - even each district! - has its own historical dress.

What has this to do with 18th century fashion, though? A lot! Many of these dresses have their origins in the 18th century, ( Read more... )