Lenora Rogers's Blog, page 42
April 10, 2017
Magic and Robots: Medieval Automatons
Love history. I can never get enough and I love learning new bits of history. Great post
When people think of the medieval or early modern period, often it conjures images of the witch trials across the western world. These people are considered a superstitious bunch, deeply religious, and very suspicious of magic. Whilst there is of course substance to some of these ideas (and I have already discussed one case of an alleged royal witch), medieval people at royal courts did...
April 6, 2017
Noor Inayat Khan – The Spy Princess
Noor Inayat Khan was a Second World War SOE agent, also famously known as the “Spy Princess”.
Noor was born under the shadows of the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia. Her father was a Sufi saint and her mother an American. Her father had followers all over the world and he was in Moscow to preach his teachings in the royal court. When the First World War broke out her family moved to Great Britain. They then moved to Paris, France permanently. They were gifted a house by one of her father’s follow...
The Burial of Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox
Margaret Douglas
On the 3rd of April 1578, Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, daughter of Margaret Tudor, Queen Dowager of Scotland and Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus, was buried at the lady chapel in Westminster Abbey. Despite being referred by her late half-brother, James V of Scotland, as his “natural sister”, she was given the full honors of a Princess.
Margaret was the mother of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots who w...
The Good Soldier Švejk: A Fool Against the System
“When Švejk subsequently described life in the lunatic asylum, he did so in exceptionally eulogistic terms: ‘I really don’t know why those loonies get so angry when they’re kept there. You can crawl naked on the floor, howl like a jackal, rage and bite. If anyone did this anywhere on the promenade people would be astonished, but there it’s the most common or garden thing to do. There’s a freedom there which not even Socialists have ever dreamed of.’” (Jaroslav Hašek, The Good So...
April 4, 2017
Realist Artist Roy Tabora finds inspiration through the beauty of the Hawaiian Islands
Roy Tabora was destined to be an artist. Born into a family of painters, young Tabora was brought up in a world where art was a way of life. Under the watchful eye of a loving uncle, his hand was skillfully trained to reproduce what his heart saw. Those early days as a studio...
Stand and Deliver, Your Money or Your Life: Female Highwaymen of the Seventeenth Century
As yesterday was International Women’s Day, I couldn’t resist writing a female-related post, and for this one I drew inspiration from a local legend in my area of the ‘Wicked Lady’. If you happen to pass through Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire, you will probably notice a pub with the same name, and may hear the legend of the female highwayman who terrorised the area 400 years ago.
It couldn’t be a post on highwaymen without an appearance from Adam Ant…
According to legend, t...
April 3, 2017
Preview: Davis – “Inventing Loreta Velasquez”
New from prolific Civil War author William C. Davis is Inventing Loreta Velasquez: Confederate Soldier Impersonator, Media Celebrity, and Con Artist. I have to admit to being somewhat ambivalent towards the whole topic of women posing as men and serving as soldiers in the war. It may have something to do with each new book on the topic claiming to tell an untold story. Or perhaps its some deep-seated chauvinism come to the surface. But the story of Velasquez is relevant here be...
The Swallow Mystery
An illustration of a swallow from “Nederlandsche Vogelen”, 1770.
Snippets 111. William Hone is a name that should be remembered, and part of my remit for this blog is to bring the works of writers such as Hone to a wider audience by selecting some interesting quotes from their work. But the reason I think Hone should be remembered is that he achieved something in 1817 that affects our lives today: he helped to establish the freedom of the press. His writing had attacke...
One Hundred Years War: The Why?
The Hundred Years War
In 1152, Henry Plantagenet d’Anjou, heir to the English throne, married Eleanor of Aquitaine, the heiress, and took the title; Duke of Aquitaine. In 1154, Henry ascended to the English throne as King Henry II of England, and started the Plantagenet dynasty. Henry now held more French land, than the King of France himself.
England’s King John, lost the lands of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine and Poitou to France. Henry III son of King John...
