He wears a very fine doublet, beloved mother, dull violet in colour, striped in a velvet ribbon with picot edge, and his ruff is well stiffened and of a good whiteness, indicating good laundresses at Newton Hall, which pleases me. And in his ha

The Biography of William Wrightson, 2nd Viscount Dorchester by Julian Fellowes

Aug 16th, 2018 4m 20s

Their wretched wives were both obliged to see husband and brother at war, a predicament cruelly underlined by Cumnor's calling out, on seeing his brother-in-law in the thick of the fighting, 'There goes my Lord Dorchester. Kill him now, I beg y

A Mathilda’s Letter by Minette Walters by Joanna Trollope

Aug 16th, 2018 3m 18s

My dear Sister,...You say I have no sympathy for your plight, but I do. Father made bad matches for both of us and I go to sleep at night wishing him in purgatory. You are married to a libertine and I to a fortune-hunter who has squandered my

Rosy by Tracy Chevalier

Aug 16th, 2018 2m 22s

...I have always flushed easily – from physical exertion, from wine, from high emotion. As a boy I was teased by my sisters and by schoolboys – but not by George. Only George could call me Rosy. I would not allow anyone else. He managed to make

The Life of Nicholas Colthurst by Sarah Singleton

Aug 16th, 2018 3m 40s

Nicholas Colthurst: scholar, swordsman and sometime privateer; a composer and musician – a player of games. The portrait was painted in 1601 when Colthurst was forty years old and at the height of his career. He is a striking, handsome man with

The Tale of Joshua Easement by Terry Pratchett

Aug 16th, 2018 2m 45s

Sir Joshua Easement, of Easement Manor, Shrewsbury, was, in his own estimation at least, one of the last of the old Elizabethan seadogs – an ambition that was somewhat thwarted by a total lack of a grasp of the principles of navigation. Documen

False Mary by Alexander McCall Smith

Dec 12th, 2011 4m 20s

Mary Peebles, or “False Mary” as she came to be known, is one of the most unusual figures of Scottish sixteenth-century history. She was the daughter of an Edinburgh merchant, a man who had prospered sufficiently to be noticed on the fringes o

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