Tag Archives: Victorians

It’s not every book that can boast to allow the reader a sneaky peak info what went on in Queen Victoria’s own wedding night, but then, The Victorian Guide to Sex by Fern Riddell is a surprising book indeed. It turns many of the commonly held perceptions of the Victorians attitudes towards sex on their heads, and has a unique …

If Louis Blake Duff is to be believed, Colonel Frederick Gustavus Burnaby ‘missed by a hair’s breadth getting into the main channels of history’.   This is short-sighted and Dr John W. Hawkins’ impressive new book well and truly rebukes the notion. It would be fair to say that, like many figures celebrated in their time through a grasp of the zeitgeist …

The incomparable Colonel Frederick Gustavus Burnaby (1842-1885) In 1876 Fred Burnaby returned from an epic winter-ride on horseback and by sledge to the Khanate of Khiva, in the heart of central Asia. His book, A Ride to Khiva, was an instant hit and ran to eleven editions in the space of a year. On Horseback through Asia Minor, written after …

In a hole in the ground there was a library, a billiard room, not to mention a luxurious smoking room with comfortable seats soft enough to get lost in.  Above there would seem to be rolling hills, and a nice round window looks out onto lush views of an idyllic countryside.  This idyllic retreat is not set in JRR Tolkien’s …