Tony Grist (poliphilo) wrote,
Tony Grist
poliphilo

Cavalier: Lucy Worsley

William Cavendish was a Civil War General (gallant but incompetent), a poet and playwright (not very good), an amateur architect (partly responsible for the delectable Bolsover Castle in Nottinghamshire), a playboy ( a great pouncer on housemaids), an ur-feminist (married and devoted to the extraordinarily eccentric Margaret- author of the first SF novel in the English language) and a horseman (the world authority on what we now call dressage, who, had he been around today, would have been weighed down with Olympic gold). It was a big life- and Worsley uses it as the peg- or series of pegs- on which to hang an entertaining social history- which tells you all you could possibly want to know about what 17th century people of all classes ate, wore, smelled like and all that kind of thing.
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  • So Mean...

    The Sainsbury's delivery guy helped me transfer our shopping from his baskets to our carrier bags- which doesn't usually happen- and it…

  • Getting Up Time

    I dreamed I had a room in College- and couldn't find it. In fact it no longer seemed to exist on the corridor where I knew it ought to have been.…

  • Picture Diary 55

    I regularly think I've exhausted the potential of AI picture-making, but then something comes along and refires my enthusiasm. For one thing the…