Tallulah Bankhead, the famous actress lived here in 1926 when she was twenty three. She once confessed to being “as pure as the driven slush” and when being told that Shirley Temple had been photographed through gauze, she replied “Then they ought to photograph me through linoleum”. Bankhead boasted …
As a preview to my forthcoming book on Eccentrics, let me tell you the story of the wonderfully odd William North, 11th Baron North (1836–1932) Lord North was a rather strange individual. He married in September 1876 and spent his honeymoon in the Caribbean. When he returned with his …
Queens Square College a fashionable school of etiquette which was founded in London in the early 19th century, became known as the ‘the Ladies Eton’. It was run by the formidable sisters, Misses Stevenson, who were originally from Dublin and was exclusively for the daughters of the growing middle …
Napoleon may have marched to victory over most of Europe, but prior to Waterloo he met with his first defeat in Josephine`s bed on his wedding night. They married on the 9th of March 1796 following a small civil ceremony. Later that night as they returned to her apartment, …
Henry Jennings (1731 – 1819) was an obsessed collector who was deeply attached to his purchases. Once he acquired a beautiful statue of Venus and he insisted that it be placed at the head of his dinner table and attended by two liveried footmen. Sculptures. Books, paintings, stuffed animals, precious …
The corset, from the Old French cors, “body” was popular from the late Middle Ages to the 1950`s. It was a close-fitting undergarment, extending from the hip to the breast, tightened by lace, reinforced with stays to give an hourglass shape. Corsets seem to have had their origin in Italy …
Despite his ill-fitting false teeth and appalling bad breath, Britain’s prime minister was seemingly irresistible to women during the Crimean War. “Lord Cupid” as he was known in Parliament, fathered seven illegitimate children and once tried to shag one of Queen Victoria`s ladies-in-waiting while he was visiting Windsor …
Britain in the seventeenth century was quite an unsettling place to live, what with Puritanism and superstition being the norm. Women in particular were still being persecuted for witchcraft as depicted in the 1968 film The Witchfinder General starring a wonderfully snarling Vincent Price. It seems that a certain …
In many western European languages, the turnip, like many other ostensibly sexless objects, possesses gender — masculine in French (navet), masculine in Spanish (nabo), feminine in German (Ruhe). This linguistic curiosity once led the touring Mark Twain to remark “In German, a young lady has no sex, while a …
Without doubt one of the biggest fans of the humble carrot was the industrialist Henry Ford, whose passion for vegetables was perhaps second only to his fondness for the car. Ford was anti-milk (“the cow is the crudest machine in the world”) and anti-meat (he promoted soybeans in lieu …
