Alone in her sick room in the late 19th century, a woman writes: What is going on? Still, she thinks: The narrator of this story is being treated by her husband, John, who is a doctor. Victorian medicine had some rather peculiar ideas about women’s mental health. Take, for instance, the notion that intellectual stimulation could damage a woman’s reproductive …
If a couple can’t have children and you want to know whose ‘fault’ it is, what do you do? Well, if we’re talking about Renaissance Italy, you might give this experiment a try. This recipe is from a 1529 book called Dificio di ricette, or ‘House of Recipes’ and I came across it recently when I was preparing a talk. …
‘It’s a weird feeling, isn’t it? Feeling relief at a death certificate.’ This must be one of the most powerful phrases in the Brazilian film ‘I’m Still Here’, which everyone seems to be talking about lately – and rightly so. The film tells the story of Eunice Paiva, whose husband, the left-wing politician Rubens Paiva, was arbitrarily arrested during the …
What if I told you the most expensive artwork ever created by a Brazilian artist is about… cannibalism? Yep, you heard that right—cannibalism. But don’t worry, it’s all metaphorical. Nobody’s getting eaten here—except maybe outdated ideas about art. This is Abaporu, sometimes called the “Brazilian Mona Lisa.” But let’s be honest—it looks nothing like the Mona Lisa. There’s no mysterious …
Do you love women writers who write with humour and irony? Who criticise their society in a satirical, tongue-in-cheek way? Do you like a good literary mystery? Let me introduce you to the elusive Ephelia – yes, that’s Ephelia with an ‘E’, not Hamlet’s Ophelia with an ‘O’. Ephelia was a 17th-century poet & playwright whose identity has puzzled historians and …
Mince pies weren’t always the sweet, fruity treats we know today. In Tudor times, they often contained meat—usually veal or mutton—along with suet, dried fruits, rosewater, and spices. Back then, sweet and savoury mingled happily in the same dish, and spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves were as much about showing off your wealth as they were about taste. These …
What if a seemingly ordinary wooden tray could tell the story of a society’s rebirth after one of the deadliest epidemics in history? “In the year of our Lord 1348, there happened at Florence, the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible plague…” So starts Boccaccio’s Decameron, one of the most celebrated texts in medieval literature. The Decameron tells us much about the …
CW: Torture, violence against women, sexual assault. Take a look at these paintings: What is this woman holding? We can tell she’s a saint by the halo around her head, but who is she? You may know this if you’re a Catholic – or an art historian – but this is St Agatha. The reason why I know this, is that …
Content Warning: Blood, animal cruelty, sexual assault. ‘She wants blood, and blood she must have or die’ – this is one of my favourite passages from Bram Stoker’s 1897 masterpiece, Dracula. (And there are several!) So, let’s set the scene. After a series of sleepwalking episodes, Lucy, one of the main characters in the novel, is left mysteriously exsanguinated: she’s …
What should you eat to be healthy? Well, the answer varies according to time and place, as we know from social media influencers who seem to constantly change their minds about what we ‘should’ or shouldn’t eat’. But who should decide what is healthy in the first place? According to some, only you can know what works for you and …
