Thursday , March 28 2024

Natalie Bennett

Natalie blogs at Philobiblon, on books, history and all things feminist. In her public life she's the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales.

Bullying (and bullied) girls

Two books about the horrible things done to girls, most often by other girls. One is the application of the label “school slut”. Now I think about it, every school, college and similar collection of adolescents or young adults with which I have been involved had a school slut, or, …

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Roman sex

A lot of what I read is about gender issues, sexuality and similar, and an email exchange off-blog recently made me think about why these are valuable beyond simply the information they contain. Studying these areas provides a continual reminder that other cultures, other times, other people don’t see the …

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Those ancients weren’t dumb

One of my most surprising, “whow” books of 2004, was The Fossil Hunters, by Adrienne Mayor. Posted on my blog is a reconstruction of the skeleton of a Protoceratops, a dinosaur that lived in what is now the Gobi desert. Below is a Scythian “griffin”, placed into the same stance. …

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The Turks, the start

They’ve arrived. No, I don’t mean the Turks, but the hordes of visitors at Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years: 600—1600 AD. It was like a rugby game in there today, albeit a very polite one. But the exhibits, if not perhaps the exhibition, deserve the attention. I only …

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Piranesi, a man of many parts

I’ve always thought of Piranesi as a sculptor; when I look several times a week at the giant, spectacular, if rather ugly “Piranesi vase”, which towers above your head in a riot of decorated marble in the Enlightenment gallery in the British Museum, that’s perhaps not surprising, but I’m learning …

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The King’s Midwife: great book, great woman

I’ve already found one of my books of 2005, The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray, by Nina Rattner Gelbart. On my site is the map assembled by the author (from ten years of research, primarily in French provincial archives) of the travels of Mme Coudray …

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