History in the Heat
In this newsletter
Hello
Book musings
History tid-bits
Poll update
Hello
Hello once again to you all, it is lovely to “see” all your faces. Summer has well and truly hit the UK and once more we go round the merry-go-round of explaining to everyone in warmer climates how our lack of aircon and houses made to survive snowy winters combine to make it very uncomfortable for us. On cooler days, being out in the sunshine is lovely (I recently visited the beautiful Kew Gardens on such a day) but this weekend was no good for anything but flopping on the sofa! This newsletter is a little bit bitty as I have been busy with non-history related things (and taking a well-needed rest from posting on the blog’s social media) but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
Book Musings
If you missed my last newsletter (well then, you can go to substack and catch up on it!) then you may have missed the news that I have signed on to write 2 more books! I’m starting to get tucked in to research for my illustrated history of women in the medieval period, as it is the soonest deadline, and as much as I love the queens and royal women I write about, I am excited to write more about working class and religious women. They are people I have touched upon during my time at university, and in reading I’ve done for pleasure over the years, but it will be great to get a deeper perspective from the other side of society during this time. I am still looking for recommendations of people to include, or books to read on the topic, so send them my way in the comments!
History tid-bits
Whilst enjoying a sunny lunch break in a London park earlier this week, I started to read a book I ordered a while back, called Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power by Clare Hunter. It’s something I’ve been looking forwards to picking it up for a while as I know bits and pieces about the embroidery that Mary made whilst in captivity in England, and I think it’s a great way to approach a historical figure rather than the conventional biographies. I admit I only made it a few pages in, so I can’t give you my verdict yet, but hopefully it’ll be a good read to dip in and out of! Have any of you read it?
Whilst talking about the book, I was reminded how Mary often used letter locking as a way to protect her letters to her allies from prying eyes. This then led me to remember fantastic news from 2 years ago which was a great example of science and history intersecting. By using X-ray scans, a team of researchers were able to reconstruct, layer by layer, a letter from 1697 that is still locked using letter locking. Historians did not want to open the letter, as it would forever change it, but by scanning the letter the researchers were able to digitally unwrap it, and thus reveal its text for us to read. Mind blowing! You can read a bit more about what they did here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/mar/02/researchers-read-sealed-17th-century-letter-without-opening-virtual-unfolding-x-ray
Poll Update
Thank you to everyone who voted in my poll 2.0, and I can reveal that thanks to you, my next post on the blog will be about the fantastically interesting Mansa Musa! I hope to get it drawn up in the next week or two, so do keep your eye on the blog for it. In the meantime, I have gotten distracted writing a blog post on a different topic altogether - I can never do things in the right order!
As always, thank you for reading, and until next time.
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