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Mastodon: AboutGet the appKeyboard shortcutsView source codev4.4.0-nightly.2025-03-25

#historicalnonfiction

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Wendy Palmer

Bit of a historical non-fiction binge recently:

James and John by Chris Bryant — a deep-dive on the last men executed in Britain for sodomy, an absolute travesty of justice.

Strangers by Graham Robb — older book, subtitled Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century and does what it says on the box — single-handedly prevented me from making the MC of my next book, set in 1842, petrified of getting caught and executed by providing the wider context of the narrow focus of James and John.

Embers of the Hands by Eleanor Barraclough — excellent, intimate look at the real lives of the Vikings as drawn from their most remarkable artefacts. Highly recommend!

Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera — an fair-handed overview of British imperialism, good historical account and context for some modern arguments (one inadvertent parallel that struck me: the ill-advised strike of a colonised people against British women and children, followed by the massive literal overkill of the British response, pretty universally condemned now with the distance of the intervening decades and centuries).

Just started Outrageous Fortunes (about Mary Fortune, early Australian crime writer), and I love her already

Looking forward to The Palace by Gareth Russell (a social history of Hampton Court Palace) and Vagabonds by Oskar Jensen (life on the streets of nineteenth century London)

#historicalNonFiction #books @bookstodon

Amid more typical Victorian verbiage, from writers truly forgettable, her vivid personality stood out. She unapologetically trusted her own taste: I have been told by some that I tell horrible stories, and by others that I am not sensational enough; and I have personally come to the conclusion that I shall tell just such stories as I please, and that those who do not like them need not read them And she savoured her financial independence: my nicely-flavoured tea . . . tastes unusually good when I remember that I have earned every penny of the money that bought it, myself.
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