I've written a piece about the how and why of the reviews I write: pitching for commissions, the process of reading and writing, and the rules I try to stick to along the way. It's over on my Substack here.
News: Substack birthday
My Substack, The Broken Compass, had its first anniversary the other day. It's been a fair bit of work, but I'm really pleased with how it's going! There are over 100 pieces to read now, including: — long reads on topics such as Nottingham alabaster, the Battle of Normandy, and Joan Miró— over twenty-five in-depth... Continue Reading →
News: Substack
Something I’ve been working on for months: a long read about Nottingham alabasters - those beautiful and obscure objects of medieval devotion.
News: Engelsberg Ideas
Really enjoyed the opportunity to write about Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, one of my very favourite albums, for Engelsberg Ideas.
The wreck of the Vrouw Maria
When the connoisseur Gerrit Braancamp died in 1771, the auction of his collection was one of Amsterdam’s events of the year. Some twenty thousand people saw it; two thousand copies of the catalogue were sold. The two most valuable paintings – a triptych by Gerard Dou known as ‘The Nursery’ and ‘Large Drove of Oxen’... Continue Reading →
Mongkut of Siam: Anna Leonowens’ philosopher king
When his father, Rama II, died in 1824, the Siamese throne was taken by Mongkut’s older half-brother, who ruled as Rama III. Mongkut himself, aged 19, joined a monastery. This wasn’t unusual: three months as a monk was customary. Mongkut stayed for twenty-seven years, becoming known as Mongkut the Beggar. While in orders Mongkut spearheaded... Continue Reading →
The great fire of Smyrna
It was, Strabo said, “the finest city in Asia”. But ruin was in Smyrna’s bones. It was destroyed by Lydia and Persia, and later by the Seljuks and the army of Timur. In Revelations, it is one of Asia’s seven churches - known for its tribulations, St John said. To the Ottomans, who took it... Continue Reading →
The first Norman king of Sicily
© Matthias Süßen, CC BY-SA 4.0 It has been said that Roger II, self-styled Rex Siciliae et Italiae, conceived of his kingdom as a “work of art”. Perhaps he did. But if so, contemporary reviews were mixed at best. To Bernard of Clairvaux he was “the Sicilian usurper”; to the Byzantine Theodore Prodromos he was... Continue Reading →
Milk bars: the craze of the age
His name was Hugh Donald McIntosh. An Australia-born entrepreneur he was a sometime fight promoter, theatrical producer and newspaper magnate. But by 1935 he was a recovering bankrupt. Previous attempts to resurrect his fortune included an angora rabbit farm and a cake shop. Now the man they called 'Huge Deal' McIntosh had a better idea.... Continue Reading →
Umbrellas in the mist: the sorry story of the Eglinton Tournament of 1839
It began as a joke. There were grumbles of conservative discontent about the lack of ceremony at the coronation of Queen Victoria in June 1838. Where was the ceremonial banquet? they asked. Where was the Royal Champion? They called it the ‘Penny Crowning’, a cheap and tawdry shadow of the real thing. A few weeks... Continue Reading →
Paul Verlaine shoots Arthur Rimbaud
Absinthe. Libidinal sex. Symbolist poetry. A heady combination, you might think. Throw in a penchant for violence and you have trouble. It was certainly all too much for Paul Verlaine. In 1871, he was 27 and if not happily married then surely securely so, and about to become a father. He had, though, stopped writing... Continue Reading →
The decipherment of Linear B
“Did you say the tablets haven’t been deciphered, sir?” The question came from the youngest member of a party of schoolboys on a tour of the Minoan Room at the Royal Academy of Arts, in 1936. The man being addressed was Sir Arthur Evans, then 85. The boy was 14 and his name was Michael... Continue Reading →
Miyamoto Musashi: a Samurai master of time
As a Samurai, Miyamoto Musashi liked to play with time. It was, in a way, a question of balance. In 1612, he had fought a duel against with Sasaki Kojiro, a swordsman known as the Demon of the Western Provinces. The agreed location was a small, uninhabited island in the Straits of Shimonoseki. Kojiro arrived... Continue Reading →
Orwell’s road to Nineteen Eighty-Four
His first published work, a poem, appeared in the autumn of 1914. ‘Awake! Young Men of England’ was a patriotic rallying cry for a beleaguered nation at war. He was 11 years old and his name was Eric Blair. He took up the pen-name George Orwell in 1932 for his first book. (Other names considered... Continue Reading →
The Rational Dress Society
Women, wrote the feminist Charlotte Stopes in 1890, were suffering under “the Despotism of the goddess Fashion… the most powerful goddess on the earth”. Stopes was a member of the Rational Dress Society, which campaigned for health, comfort and beauty in women’s clothing – and practicality, too. Stopes knew many women, she wrote, who began... Continue Reading →
Gustav Klimt and the Vienna Secession
On 3 April 1897, nineteen painters and sculptors met in a Viennese coffee house. Out of the meeting came a new arts movement, the Vereinigung Bildender Künstler Österreichs, better known as the Viennese Secession. At its head was a young Gustav Klimt. Art in Vienna was controlled by the Künstlerhaus, the artists’ professional body. The... Continue Reading →
Little Jack, the boy missionary
“What more pleasing to a Christian parent whose heart yearns over his children… [than] to see them thus engaged in the best of all causes, even the extension of the Redeemer’s kingdom,” wrote the Methodist Joseph Blake in The Day of Small Things, his 1849 tract encouraging the promotion of missionary zeal to the youngest... Continue Reading →
The acid-tongued ambassadress
“I always see the faults of my friends,” writes Walburga, Lady Paget, in the introduction to her 1923 two-volume memoir Embassies of Other Days. “But I like their faults and I mention them as it adds to the piquancy of their personalities.” The second volume closes with a further disclaimer. “I have related everything exactly... Continue Reading →
News: Substack
Hi folks. I’ve started a Substack called The Broken Compass. The plan is for it to feature essays and book reviews, thoughts and reflections on my current research and reading, and, I hope, interviews with other historians and authors. The first posts will be up next week - a series of three pieces about the... Continue Reading →
Einhard: historian, sinner, manlet
They must have looked odd together, the Frankish king and the courtier who later memorialised him. Charlemagne was tall for the period, around six foot three. Einhard meanwhile, his friend Walahfrid wrote, was “despicable in stature” – a “tiny manlet”, in Einhard’s own phrase. Born into a family of modest wealth, Einhard was educated at... Continue Reading →
Mathew Lyons 