Tag: history
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Victorian Romance: The Art of Cobweb Valentines
Today is Valentine’s Day, a centuries-old holiday celebrating love, strangely on a day commemorating someone’s execution. From the late medieval period in Europe, when courtly love and chivalry were at their peak, it became popular to think of romantic love on this day. By the 18th century, the day had become a time for lovers…
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A Brief Moment of History: When Napoleon Took on Rabbits
If you are familiar with my “brief moment of history” series, then you may have read about the time the Australian army fought a war against emus (and lost). When looking at history, it seems that great military men losing fights against animals is not so unique. This brings us to Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte is…
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Seeing the Dead: The Fayum Mummy Portraits
One unifying thing that people find enjoyable about history is learning about the people who have come before us. We want to feel connected to our ancestors, to understand how they dealt with the trials and tribulations of their times, how wars were started, palaces were built, empires spread – but also the stories of…
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A Brief Moment of History: Was Queen Elizabeth I Secretly a Man?
There are many historical conspiracy theories that abound (often involving aliens…) but one of my favourite is the peculiar theory that Tudor Queen Elizabeth I was, in fact, a man. Let us explore! The theory was first written down back in the nineteenth century by Dracula author, Bram Stoker. Bram had visited the village of…
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An Interview With: Thilde Kold Holdt, Historical Fantasy Author
I am very excited to have another fantastic guest on Just History Posts for our interview series, Thilde Kold Holdt. Thilde is a Viking, traveller and a polygot fluent in Danish, French, English and Korean. As a writer, she is an avid researcher. This is how she first came to row for hours upon hours…
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Royston Cave: An Unexplained Enigma
Humans have been drawn to caves since their earliest days. Places of shelter, they sometimes evolved into something new: places of burial, religious ritual, to record one’s history on its walls. Many mysterious workings of humankind have been found across the world, and one English cave adds to this tradition. Royston is a small town…
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Book Review: “River Kings” by Cat Jarman
I like to keep ideas fresh on Just History Posts, and for a while I have toyed with the idea of writing book reviews. As I write history books myself, I read lots of snippets of books and articles for my work, which means for a while now I haven’t actually read many history books…
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Elizabeth II: Before She Was Queen
On Thursday 8th September 2022, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth died. She was Britain’s longest-lived and longest-reigning monarch, and the longest serving female head of state in the world. As a Brit and a historian with an interest and knowledge of royal history, it felt only fitting to write something about…
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Historical Figures: Madam C J Walker, Titan of Industry
Years ago I was writing one of my daily social media posts on the theme of “on this day” and I saw that the day I was writing (23rd December) was the birthday of a woman named Madam C J Walker. Intrigued, I looked into her to see whether to write a post about her…
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Historic Houses: Harvington Hall, House of Secrets
One of my favourite pastimes, you probably will not be surprised to hear, is visiting historic sites. Working in heritage, writing history books and running a history blog is apparently not enough of a history fix for me, so my weekends are often spent exploring more history! I am very lucky to live in the…
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