Fascinating History

To all London readers, I hope you, your family, friends and colleagues are all ok on this terrible day. Please take care! A.

George IV was the son of the notorious King George III. Instead of developing a reputation for being well and truly mad like his father, George junior became known as a great ladies man and bon viveur. George loved to indulge and he did so often. Throughout his life he had a series of mistresses, the first of which was Mary Robinson when he was 18 years-old in 1780. She was an actress and said to be extremely witty with very long dark hair. He saw her in a performance at the Drury Lane Theatre and started sending her expensive gifts. As the affair progressed he decided to write her a bond for 20,000 guineas, which was a lot of money in those days. However, when the affair was over the Prince took the bond back and instead gave her an annuity of 500 pounds per annum. Next on his list was Mrs Grace Dalrymple Eliot. She had married a man 20 years her senior, a doctor for the aristocracy. This gave her entry to London's high society circles where she met the Prince as well as other men...

Josephine The story of Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais has got to be one of the most passionate and stormy love affairs in history. Josephine's husband had been executed at the guillotine during the Terror in Paris in 1794. As a widow however, she did not remain idle for long and became mistress to several prominent politicians of the time. In 1795 she started a relationship with Napoleon, who was 6 years younger than her and married him in March of the following year after an intense an all-consuming love affair. In 1810, after years of failing ot produce an heir for him they both agreed to divorce. The intensity of their relationship comes across very strongly in Napoleon's letters to her, an example of which is the below: "Dec. 29, 1795 I awake all filled with you. Your image and the intoxicating pleasures of last night, allow my senses no rest. Sweet and matchless Josephine, how strangely you work upon my heart. Are you angry with me? Are you unhappy? A...

The Roman Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117 - 138) loved to travel. In fact he spent most of his reign travelling through his provinces and has the honour of being the only ruler to have ruled over most of the European mainland, North Africa until the end of the Sahara, the Middle East and Britain and to have actually been to these places. Wherever Hadrian travelled to, as well as having a huge entourage to go with him (his wife, familly, friends, staff, slaves, etc.), he was followed by a large number of petitioners, hoping to present him with their issue. There is a tale of a woman who comfronted Hardian while he was on horseback and asked him to listen to her plight. When he told her he had no time, she replied that he might as well not be the emperor, at which point Hardian decided to listen to her and got off his horse. In Cassius Dio's words: 'Once, when a woman made a request of him as he passed by on a journey, he at first said to her, "I haven't time," but afterw...

Elizabethan food had little if any resemblance to contemporary English dishes. Recipes of the day added sugar, honey and fruit like oranges, prunes and dates to meat. A rabbit for example was stuffed with pepper and currants and then boiled in mutton broth. A recipe for capon (castrated rooster) included sugar, nutmeg and almonds and was served with prunes. One could also boil a capon in a broth of eight oranges, sugar, cloves, mace, cinnamon and nutmeg. The brains of capons were also utilised to make brain pies. Sheep’s head was a delicacy. Instead of a baking tin, Elizabethan cooks used a tray made of hard pastry, which was unnervingly called a ‘coffin’. Coffins were not made to be eaten of course. Fish was either poached or fried in butter, while the poor ate dried salted cod. Salmon, turbot and eel were all poached in ale. Strawberries were soaked in red wine with sugar, cinnamon and ginger and cherries would be served with mustard. A recipe for pie goes like this: “To make a pie o...

Everyone has probably heard of Lady Godiva riding naked through the streets of Coventry 900 years ago. Godiva was married to Leofric, Earl of Mercer and Lord of Coventry. The notorious ride has been lost between myth and reality and we do not have any concrete evidence that it really too place at all. Roger of Wendover in 1057 writes of Godiva begging her husband to lessen the tax burden he had imposed on the people of Coventry. After having been nagged for some time about this, Leofric told her he would do as she wanted but under one condition: She would have to ride through town completely naked. The story goes that she accepted this and after ordering the people to stay indoors and shut their windows and doors (windows in Anglo-Saxon England were not made of glass and were more similar to shutters), she loowened her extremely long hair, had it cover her as a cloak and mounted her horse. The people apparently obeyed her orders and did not peep as she rode through the streets, except ...

Murad IV We may well have warnings of the risks associated with smoking, on packets of cigarettes nowadays, but in 17th century Turkey things were a bit more serious. Sultan Murad IV was so opposed to his subjects smoking that he issued a decree stating that anyone found smoking would be killed and their corpse left to rot, at the spot where they were executed, even if that was a coffee shop, a street or home. Naturally this was a very effective deterrant. However, Sultan Murad was not your average guy and many things as well as smoking irritated him to the point of warranting the death penalty. Like his predecessors he was rather mad and also an alcoholic. He could often be seen running through the streets at night, drunk, while simultaneously killing any unfortunate passer-by with his sword (they obviously irritated him by being there...). His favourite sport was to shoot arrows and bullets at the women of his harem and occasionaly ordered that many of them be drowned in front of him...