Category: History Videos
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All the Broken Places, by John Boyne: reading vlog and review
All the Broken Places is the long-awaited sequel to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Is it worth the read or is John Boyne up to his old tricks again? Sit down with me to read the book and find out! John Boyne, All The Broken Places (London: Penguin, 2022), https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/a63fcead-1bcb-49e0-9101-a75d4d4999b9 Derek Scally, John Boyne:…
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Some thoughts on Gentleman Jack and some hope that we’ll get to see more
Gentleman Jack, based on the diaries of Anne Lister, has been cancelled after only two seasons. But even so, Suranne Jones’ version of Anne Lister has touched so many people’s hearts and the series has raised awareness about a previously little-known part of history. So here are my thoughts about Gentleman Jack while we hope…
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The small mix-up when there were three Popes
Today, the Pope is well known as the unwavering figurehead of the Catholic church. But the Pope’s position of authority hasn’t always been so stable. And the Pope hasn’t always been elected in the most, let’s say, sensible way. Let’s take a look back at that time when there were three Popes all claiming to…
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Kim Kardashian wore Marilyn Monroe’s dress: what’s the problem?
We all saw the video of Kim Kardashian trying to squeeze her derriere into Marylin Monroe’s iconic Happy Birthday dress. And now the dress has gone back on display at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not attraction and we can finally see for certain the damage that has been done. Straps torn, seams ripped, rhinestones…
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Franz Nopcsa: the queer paleobiologist spy/scholar/lover you need to know about
Come with me to a not-so-conventional Valentine’s night at the Natural History Museum, where I tell you all about Franz Nopcsa, a Hungarian aristocrat who pioneered methods of palaeobiology while spying for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and riding around Europe on his motorbike with his secretary/boyfriend and becoming so obsessed with Albanian language and culture that…
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A historical review of Bill (2015)
Welcome to my historical tour through the film Bill (2015) from the Six Idiots, the original cast of Horrible Histories, featuring some literary history, the Elizabethan royal court and the most extra 16th-century playwright you need to know about now. Is it really possible for a comedy film to represent the past accurately?