Category: history
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Allies against slavery: Ignatius Sancho and Laurence Sterne
Ignatius Sancho was one of the most prominent black Britons of the eighteenth century – and without doubt the most multi-talented. Born in Africa, according to his own account (or on board ship, according to his biographer, Joseph Jekyll), he was shipped across the Atlantic to be a slave in the Spanish colony of New…
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Sir John Perrot: two faces of a ruffian
One of the images included in Wales in 100 objects is a small oil painting by an unknown artist, now in Haverfordwest Town Museum, of the Elizabethan magnate Sir John Perrot. I chose this particular portrait, painted long after Perrot’s death, because it shows its subject as a jaunty, stylish and dashing character, whereas in…
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Indexing Gilbert White
Selborne, Hampshire. Why we’ve never been there before I don’t know. The village isn’t far from Winchester, familiar enough territory. It’s a bit off the beaten track, though a busy B road passes through the village, channelling noise and people through the narrow main street that would have been quiet in the mid-eighteenth century, when…
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In Bunhill Fields
This week we paid a visit to a place that’s been on my wish list for many years: Bunhill Fields. Some might think it a perverse pilgrimage, because Bunhill Fields isn’t not a rural glade or open park, but an old burial ground – the origin of ‘Bunhill’ is thought to be ‘bone hill’ –…
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The Monmouthshire and Caerleon Antiquarian Association
1 Origins and foundations The first local archaeological society in Wales, the Caerleon Antiquarian Association, was founded on 28th October 1847. It owed its existence largely to the efforts of one man, John Edward Lee (1). Born in Hull in 1808, Lee worked from the age of sixteen in his uncles’ shipping office, but…
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Mr Deas
Another birthday, and I’m celebrating by throwing out yet more paper hoarded over the years. This time it includes a dark red ring-file containing notes and essays from my first-year university course in Classics. They’re written in handwriting it’s still quite easy to make out. (By contrast, my handwriting today, disabled by decades of keyboard…
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In search of 100 objects
September 2018 has turned out to be a month of personal endings. Three weeks ago, after five and a half years of sporadic legwork, we finished the last mile of the Wales Coast Path. This week saw the publication of two books I’ve been working on for what seems almost as long, Wales in 100…
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What the bishop said to the queen
I suspect most people visit Llangathen, in the Tywi valley, to see the wonderful restored gardens at Aberglasne (Aberglasney in its Anglicised form). But the village has other things to offer: a surprisingly bright and roomy neo-Tudor ‘Temperance Hall’, and the large church of St Cathen. (The village used to be more populous than it…
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Lloyd George a’r bachgen yn y llun
Cricieth, 1890: David Lloyd George, cyfreithiwr a gwleidydd, 27 mlwydd oed, a John Thomas, ffotograffydd, 52 mlwydd oed. Lloyd George: Ydych chi’n siŵr am y lle hwn, Mr Thomas? John Thomas: Dewis perffaith, dywedwn i, Mr Lloyd George. LlG: David, plîs, Mr Thomas. Dim angen ichi fod yn ffurfiol. Dyn y werin bobl ydw i,…
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Ar enwau lleoedd
Y profiad a adawodd yr argraff fwya arna i yn ystod yr wythnos ddiwethaf oedd gwylio ffilm fer, fel rhan o raglen deledu Wales Live, oedd yn dangos y digrifwr Tudur Owen yn cerdded ar draws bae ar Ynys Môn – fel mae’n digwydd, bae yr ymwelais i ag e’n ddiweddar iawn. Nid y cerdded…