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2. The hidden luxury of the artisan casa in Sixteenth-Century Venice
By Zoe Farrell | @zoeffarrell In 1534, a man named Michele died in Venice and an inventory was taken of his possessions. Proceeding through the different rooms in his casa, Michele’s inventory details a large variety of material goods. Starting with precious objects of gold and silver, it proceeds to detail his fine clothing and furniture. From this…
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5. Empathy in the archives
By Fred Smith | @Fred_E_Smith ‘Like death, like the cemetery which is at the centre of the village, violence is at the heart of life in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries’. It is easy for the historian of early modern England to become desensitised to violence and suffering. Studying the religious changes of this period, changes which…
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8. Hidden histories
By Harriet Lyon | @HarrietLyon My favourite archival source is the one I almost missed: a note, less than a page long, pasted into the back of a notebook belonging to the antiquary William Dugdale (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Hist. c 485, fol. 100). Dated July 1652, it recounts a shameful secret told in a private conversation…
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12. Oral history in the British Library
By George Severs In 1972, Raphael Samuel wrote of the ‘perils of the transcript’, the potential for mutilation and distortion of the spoken word when it is transferred to the page. In the 45 years since then, oral historians and archivists have been keen to heed this warning, yet inevitably such difficulties persist.
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Capturing the Raj: visual narratives of British India
By Mobeen Hussain | @amhuss27 In the last few years, there has been a resurgence of period adaptations based on the British in India. This spat of television and film productions depicts particular historical narratives that romanticise the British Empire and hark back to the good-old-days of British imperialism. Indian Summers (2015), Victoria and Abdul…
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