Julia Herdman's Blog: Julia Herdman Books, page 10
July 14, 2017
Princess in D.I.Y Marriage
As the daughter of a king Princess Augusta was denied access to men of her own rank except those in her immediate family for most of her life. Like several of George III’s daughters she found herself lonely and drawn into romances with gentleman at court whether they were suitable or not. It is believed […]
July 13, 2017
Princess Blackmailed by Illegitimate Son
This is the sad story of Princess Sophia. An unworldly and shy woman who was seduced by a man 33 years her senior, gave birth to his illegitimate child, and was blackmailed by her son to pay his father’s debts. According to her biographer Christopher Hibbert, in her young adulthood Princess Sophia, the 5th daughter […]
July 12, 2017
The Man Who Took the Knife to London’s High Society
By the 1780s John Hunter was the leading anatomist in Europe and an influential figure in Georgian high society: he had married a beautiful bluestocking poet, Anne Home, and was surgeon extraordinary to King George III. During the day, the carriages of his wealthy patients blocked Leicester Square, where he lived with his family. In […]
July 7, 2017
Writing about women in the past
The position of women in the historical novel is problematic for authors like me. Exploring the strengths and weaknesses of my characters and how they cope with the historical world is what interests me and I want to show women in a positive and realistic light. However when it comes to writing about women in […]
Flowers, Theatre and Fashion – Fanny Abington
Frances Barton or Frances “Fanny” Barton was the daughter of a private soldier and started her working life as a flower girl and a street singer. She performed in taverns and resorted to selling herself as many hard up women did in those days before she made it onto the stage. Her first step to […]
The girl struck by lightening found a Plesiosaurus
At the age of 12, Mary Anning was to become one of the most famous palaeontologists in the country. Her discovery of a complete Icthyosaur was probably discovered by her brother, Joseph, who spotted what he presumed to be a head of a crocodilian in the layers of limestone rocks around their home town of […]
July 6, 2017
Marie-Antoinette – “A woman eaten alive by her frocks”
In the London Review of Books in 2013 novelist Hilary Mantel wrote in an article about the book she would choose to give to her chosen famous person. Her choice of book and the person she chose to give it to was a shock. Mantel chose ‘Queen of Fashion – What Marie Antoinette Wore to […]
July 5, 2017
75 Years of Spam
SPAM is celebrating its 75th birthday today. Love it or hate it we’ve all had it at sometime in our lives and it would not have happened without Nicholas Appert a confectioner and chef in Paris. In 1795, he began experimenting with ways to preserve foodstuffs, succeeding with soups, vegetables, juices, dairy products, jellies, jams, […]
July 3, 2017
The First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe
Jeanne Baret was born on July 27, 1740, in the village of La Comelle in the Burgundy region of France. Her record of baptism survives and identifies her as the legitimate issue of Jean Baret and Jeanne Pochard. Her father is identified as a day labourer and seems likely to have been illiterate, as he […]
June 30, 2017
18th Century Crazes
The craze for porcelain was not orchestrated – it was a by-product of another craze; the craze for drinking tea and to a lesser extent coffee. As tea drinking really took hold the East India Company’s imports rocketed. By 1750 around four million pounds of tea were be imported to Britain and the porcelain was […]
