Thomas Messel, what first attracted you to the period or periods you work in? The focus of my study was a late eighteenth-century ancestor called Elizabeth Linley. I was aware that she eloped with and married the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, but initially, I...
18th C
Elizabeth Linley, 1754-1792
Elizabeth Linley at the age of seventeen is England’s most celebrated singer. Her beauty and voice can captivate the King, or send an audience into a state of wild infectious hysteria, but suddenly and mysteriously she disappears during the night of March the 18th...
Thomas Messel
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The History behind The Bratinsky Affair
The History behind The Bratinsky Affair "It is not the wimpled version of history that is interesting but its brutality." - Hilary Mantel The story of Countess Irina Bratinsky, née O’Rourke de Breffny, has its roots in the religious wars of 17th-century Ireland and...
Echoing Greens: How Cricket Shaped the English Imagination, by Brendan Cooper
Echoing Greens: How Cricket Shaped the English Imagination, by Brendan Cooper It is now a cliché - perhaps always has been - to refer to cricket as a rich quarry for artistic achievement, even as mainstream coverage becomes less fixated on the written word and more...
2025 Summer Reads from Aspects of History
Summer Reads from Aspects of HistoryLucy Ashe Author of The Sleeping BeautiesThe Eights is Joanna Miller’s debut novel that combines fascinating historical research with the creation of four compelling female characters, The Eights is set at St Hugh’s College, Oxford,...
Winding Down at the Chalke Hist Fest
Winding Down at the Chalke Hist Fest - Saturday & Sunday This was the day that sapped me, the closeness of the heat unendurable and getting oneself up for another talk tricky as the crowds swarmed to Broad Chalke in their droves. The cool mornings, however, have...
Reinforcements arrive at the Chalke Hist Fest
Reinforcements arrive at the Chalke Hist Fest 5 - Friday It had been a relatively late one as the campsite dragged itself up and back to it. The antics seemed to be crescendoing into the weekend. Having spent a pleasant evening in the company of Aspects of History’s...
CHF 2025: Day 5
CHF 2025: Day 5 UKRAINE: THE LATEST LIVE – WITH NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER OLEKSANDRA MATVIICHUK, Oleksandra Matviichuk w. Francis Dearnley, Dominic Nicholls and Adelie Pojzman-Pontay The incredible team behind The Telegraph’s award-winning podcast were on stage to...
Camping at the Chalke Hist Fest
Chalke Hist Fest 4 - Thursday It’s all become routine now – more or less six years without having camped and I’ve surprised myself by enjoying it! The warm showers and the Kiwi coffee van twenty metres away lures me out in the morning, a couple of protein ‘crisps’ and...









