If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home
by:
Lucy Worsley (author)
Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did Samuel Pepys never give his mistresses an orgasm? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two "dirty centuries"? Why did gas lighting cause Victorian ladies to faint? Why, for centuries, did people fear fruit? All...
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Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did Samuel Pepys never give his mistresses an orgasm? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two "dirty centuries"? Why did gas lighting cause Victorian ladies to faint? Why, for centuries, did people fear fruit? All these questions will be answered in this juicy, smelly, and truly intimate history of home life. Lucy Worsley takes us through the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen, covering the architectural history of each room, but concentrating on what people actually did in bed, in the bath, at the table, and at the stove. From sauce-stirring to breast-feeding, teeth-cleaning to masturbation, getting dressed to getting married, this book will make you see your home with new eyes.Praise for If Walls Could Talk: "Dr. Lucy Worsley charts the evolution of the British home … It's a fascinating journey."-Daily Mail (UK )"Anecdotes, jokes and fascinating facts come thick and fast … Worsley's eye for quirky detail is so compelling you quickly find yourself gripped by the most unlikely subjects."-Mail on Sunday (UK )"Saucy intimacies and salacious secrets … I was glued."-Country Life (UK )
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Format: hardcover
ISBN:
9780802779953 (0802779956)
Publish date: February 28th 2012
Publisher: Walker & Company
Pages no: 368
Edition language: English
Category:
Non Fiction,
History,
Reference,
European Literature,
British Literature,
Historical Fiction,
Adult,
Medieval,
Culture,
Sociology,
Architecture,
Research
A bit superficial but interesting look at the English home and how it came to be the way it is. A good companion to the TV series it has an extensive bibliography. It does show how the English home was influenced by other factors but it's largely about the British home. It does suffer a little fr...
Worsley has collected a large set of amusing anecdotes, mixed it with easily digested history, and presented it as "the history of the home." It's charming, if flighty. If you already know much English history, few things will surprise you--but if you don't, I'm sure you'll find this fascinating a...
This is a fairly lightweight and easy to read discussion of the history of the four main rooms of the house: living room, bedroom, bathroom and kitchen. Starting with the medieval manor house with its single large room, the author describes the origins of each separate room, how they were used in th...
This turned out to be a less-than-appealling read for me. Companion edition to a television programme on the BBC, historian Lucy Worsley takes the reader on a tour and history of four rooms in the modern home -- the bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. Unfortunately, the author squanders the ...
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful-William MorrisIf Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home is written in a very readable tone, and covers the four main areas of the house: the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room and the kitchen, fro...
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