Aroma begins with an idea that pulled me up short: Smell is a cultural, hence a social and historical, phenomenon.

History Carnival No 4 is up now at Blogenspiel, which is written by “Another Damned Medievalist”. (She doesn’t explain that term, but it sounds like it has a history of its own.) The framework is histographical, looking at what history is and should be — including a student who finds …

There's a sense of pathos, but also fascination, in a tiny insight into a moment in the lives of people of which you otherwise know, and probably can know, nothing.

I'm a Dorothy L Sayers fan, so when Sharon on Early Modern Notes mentioned a new Harriet Vane novel, I was on Amazon in a flash.

Just discovered the writer Thomas Burke, through a random selection at the London Library of his The London Spy, 1922. It is a wander around the streets, with a strong focus on the East End and the seamier sides of life, typical of his work – in fact he was …

I’ve never really gotten into the Mona Lisa; its iconic status seems so much a matter of historical accident rather than any reflection on its merits, and trying to see it in the Louvre is such a scramble that it hardly seems worth the effort. But I was fascinated to …

Blogs are wonderful, but there are millions of them, and how do you find like-minded souls among the multitudes? Like many bloggers, I suspect, my initial discoveries were random, but I soon learnt to follow others’ blogrolls. But after a while that becomes horribly circular. One way to break out …

An excellent meme, via Purple Pen … Which authors have you read more than ten books by? Mine are (or those I can remember thus far, roughly in the order in which I read them) … Enid Blyton Arthur Ransome Elyne Mitchell (particularly her brumby books. (Brumbies are wild horses.) …

As a city cyclist, one of the banes of my existence is ridiculously large vehicles, particularly 4WDs. (SUVs in American parlance.) Many of their drivers seem utterly unaware of the poor visibility of these hulks, or indeed even of their real size – near had my shoulder taken off by …

Michael Grandage’s production of Don Carlos in London entirely justifies the “stunning” blurb. It is an 18th-century play by Friedrich Schiller, of whom I must confess I had not previously heard. The play is stunning – the plots, the twists, the betrayals, the sheer drama is up there with Macbeth, …