Lucy Lethbridge is de auteur van talrijke boeken en schrijft ook voor vooraanstaande Britse kranten en literaire tijdschriften. Haar schrijven kenmerkt zich door scherp inzicht in kunst en cultuur. Ze onderzoekt de ingewikkelde relaties tussen kunstwerken en hun sociale context. Haar werk nodigt lezers uit tot diepere beschouwing van de kunstwereld.
Born into a wealthy family, Florence Nightingale could have lived a life of leisure and luxury. Instead she longed to be a nurse. In 1830, that was the last thing a rich girl could do - but Florence was no ordinary girl. Ages 7-11.
- Looks at people whose discoveries and achievements have changed the world.
A collection of true stories of piracy, from the first pirates of the Ancient World to the Golden Age of Piracy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Contains true life stories of hardship and brutality, bringing to life the flamboyant characters of the most famous captains and the men who set out to capture them. Black and white line drawings.
Servants: A Downstairs View of Twentieth-century Britain is the social history of the last century through the eyes of those who served. From the butler, the footman, the maid and the cook of 1900 to the au pairs, cleaners and childminders who took their place seventy years later, a previously unheard class offers a fresh perspective on a dramatic century. Here, the voices of servants and domestic staff, largely ignored by history, are at last brought to life: their daily household routines, attitudes towards their employers, and to each other, throw into sharp and intimate relief the period of feverish social change through which they lived. Sweeping in its scope, extensively researched and brilliantly observed,Servants is an original and fascinating portrait of twentieth-century Britain; an authoritative history that will change and challenge the way we look at society.
Daughter of the famous romantic poet Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace was a child prodigy. Brilliant at maths, she read numbers like most people read words. A hundred years before the dawn of digital technology, Ada was working out how to build a machine that could operate like a human mind, this machine is what we now call the computer!
Meticulous research reveals the cleaning practices of British estates from the Victorian to Edwardian eras, emphasizing the use of simple, eco-friendly ingredients like lemon juice and vinegar. Lucy Lethbridge uncovers forgotten techniques employed by servants to maintain immaculate homes before the advent of modern cleaning products. This book serves as a treasury of advice, enriched with insights from servants' memoirs and illustrated with period art, making it an invaluable resource for those interested in traditional cleaning methods.
In the late nineteenth century, general housework in the British home was so labour intensive that it required an army of servants to undertake it. Since then, the ways in which we look after our homes may have changed dramatically but the best and simplest of methods from that time still work for us today.From floor to ceiling, and leaving no awkward corner untouched, here are the tricks and techniques that generations once took for granted, distilled for modern use: how to get rid of water marks or heat rings on polished wood; the antibacterial qualities of simple vinegar; the damp cloth versus the dry duster; and using lemon juice to clear limescale. Combining fascinating 'below-stairs' social history with startling facts and useful tips, Lucy Lethbridge restores fast-disappearing skills to keep at bay dust, rust, mildew, stains and pests. Here, beautifully illustrated and entertainingly presented, are a bygone era's keys to a clean house.
"'It is the paramount wish of every English heart, ever addicted to vagabondizing, to hasten to the Continent -' In 1815 the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end the Napoleonic Wars and the European continent opened up once again to British tourists. The nineteenth century was to be an age driven by steam technology, mass-industrialisation and movement, and, in the footsteps of the Grand Tourists a hundred years earlier, the British middle-classes flocked to Europe to see the sights. In Tourists, the voices of these travellers puzzled, shocked, delighted and amazed are brought vividly to life. From the discomfort of the stagecoach to the 'self-contained pleasure palace' of the beach resort, Lucy Lethbridge brilliantly examines two centuries of tourists' experience. Among a range of disparate characters, we meet the commercial titans of Victorian tourism, Albert Smith, Henry Gaze and Thomas Cook, as well as their successor, Vladimir Raitz, the creator of the modern beach holiday. The growth of popular tourism introduced new markets in guidebooks, souvenirs, cuisine and health cures. It smoothed over class differences but also exacerbated them. It destroyed traditional cultures while at the same time preserving them. From portable cameras to postcards and suntans, Tourists explores how tourism has reflected changing attitudes to modernity and how, from the grand hotel to the campsite, the foreign holiday exposes deep fears, hopes and even longings for home"--Publisher's description