Lenora Rogers's Blog, page 60
November 7, 2016
Il timore dell’avvenire e quello della morte (Sen. ad Luc. III, 24)
da Lettere a Lucilio, in U. Boella (cur.), Seneca – Opere, vol. I, Torino 1975, pp. 154-165 (Testo latino da L.D.Reynolds (ed.), L. Annaei Senecae Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, vol. I, Oxford 1965).
Seneca Lucilio suo salutem.
[1] Sollicitum esse te scribis de iudici eventu quod tibi furor inimici denuntiat; existimas me suasurum ut meliora tibi ipse proponas et acquiescas spei blandae. Quid enim necesse est mala accersere, satis cito patienda cum venerint prae...
Roman Britain: Hadrian’s Wall
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar’s invasion force landed on Britain’s south-coast in 55 BC, and found it inhabited by Celtic tribes. In 56 BC Caesar returned to Britain, and came face to face with the Catevellauni, whom he defeated in battle. Caesar set up treaties and alliances before withdrawing his forces, and so the Roman occupation of Britain had begun.
In AD43, Emperor Claudius sent Aulus Plautius with a force of some 24,000 Roman soldiers to Britain, with orders...
November 6, 2016
Remembering Poe
Stories From Ipswich and the North Shore
by Helen Breen
Thelife-size statue of Edgar Alan Poe in Boston, dedicated in 2014, captures the writer’s energy as he approaches his nearby birthplace. Photo from Eating Books
Poe’s stories of horror and suspense, along with his melancholy poetry, are part of Halloween traditions in America. The writer, who was born in Boston in 1809, maintained a love/hate relationship with the city during his...
Yolande and the Hope for the Scottish Succession
History... the interesting bits!
Yolande de Dreux
Yolande de Dreux was Scotland’s Queen Consort for only 4 months and 14 days. In that short time, she carried the hope of a nation – and its king – to secure the Scottish succession.
Yolande was born into a cadet branch of the French royal family, probably sometime in the mid-1260s. Her father was Robert IV, Count of Dreux, who died in 1282 and her mother was Beatrice de Montfort, who died in 1311. Beatrice was the daughter of Count Jean I d...
The Forgotten Irish Brought to Life on RTE Radio 1
Irish in the American Civil War
The first publicity for my new bookThe Forgotten Irishcame recently on the RTE Radio 1’s The History Show. The programme featured extracts from four of the stories, with actors reading from a number of the letters. It is always great to hear these letters brought to life in this way– particularly as one gets a feel for the regional accents of the individuals involved. This part of the show has now been podcast, and you can listen to it by clicking here.
Scavenging: tents into clothes, and food for bullets
From John Hennessy
I came across these two accountsrecently, calculated to make relic hunters weep and remind us all just how difficult things were in this part of the world by 1864.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch, July 25, 1864
“We noticed at the Central Depot on Saturday six cars loaded with arms, knapsacks, cartridge boxes, sabres, &c., together with a large lot of pig lead, the spoils of the battle-fields of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania. The balls are collec...
November 3, 2016
William Tecumseh Sherman: Grant’s Perfect Lieutenant
William Tecumseh Sherman, frequently considered the first “modern” general, was above all, the indispensable lieutenant to Ulysses S. Grant.
Sherman Meets Lincoln
William T. Sherman (1820-1891), Ohio born and bred, was orphaned as a child and foster-raised by the politically powerful Ewing family. A West Point graduate, he fulfilled his obligations, entered the private sector, and by 1861, was content as the head of the Louisiana Military Academy.
When the Civil Wa...
‘Horrors of Malformed Men’ – a Trick or a Treat?
Following Orson Welles’ psycho-social experiment, we have one more proposition for this year’s Halloween for you. Horrors of Malformed Men
is a rare gem of Japanese cinematography. Released on the 31st of October 1969, the movie was banned in Japan shortly after its premiere. A mixture of pink film and horror, in Japan commonly known as ‘ero-guro’, which means ‘erotic grotesque’, it turned out to be a bit too much for the audiences of the 1960s. The movie director, Teruo Ishii, ba...
LAST PORTRAIT TAKEN OF GENERAL GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER BEFORE BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN, 1876.
LAST PORTRAIT TAKEN OF GENERAL GEORGE ARMSTRONG CUSTER BEFORE BATTLE OF LITTLE BIG HORN, 1876.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armstrong_Custer
Was green fashionable in the 18th century?
As we haven’t written any fashion related posts for a while we thought it might be interesting to look at both clothing and paintings showing the vast array of colours worn in Georgian fashion, but, as our regular readers will be aware we got side-tracked when we realized that there were relatively few outfits and paintings of people wearing the colour green and we wondered why, so began to investigate!
We wondered whether it simply wasn’t a fashionable colour amongst th...
