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  • Daily History Picture: Medieval Dog May 19, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Medieval Dog

    Delicate

    Daily History Picture: Olympic Archery May 18, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Olympic Archery

    1908 London

    Creepy Familiars: Jarmara May 18, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Creepy Familiars: Jarmara

    One of the joys of reading about early modern witch trials is the description (particularly in British cases) of the crazy and creepy familiars kept by old women for their various delectations and debaucheries. Beach recently publicized a spirit mole and he now wishes to introduce Jamara, described in three different passages relating to some […]

    Daily History Picture: Tattoo WW2 May 17, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Tattoo WW2

    Interesting designs on wall beyond.

    William Blake and Bruno’s Fairies May 17, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    William Blake and Bruno's Fairies

    It is well known that William Blake drew and painted fairies and it is also a matter of record that Blake saw fairies. Blake, allegedly, described to a flabbergasted contemporary how he has witnessed a fairy funeral. Beach has looked in vain for other references to Blake kicking it up with the fairies and he […]

    Daily History Picture: VE Day May 16, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: VE Day

    In the US? 29 May 2017: Ruth from WA ‘Were you asking if the picture was taken in the US? As far as I can find it was, this is the description I found for it: VE (Victory in Europe) Day, Philadelphia, PA, May 8, 1945 / Courtesy of Temple University, Urban Archives, Philadelphia, Pa.’ […]

    Killing Baby Stalin or Hitler? May 16, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Killing Baby Stalin or Hitler?

    A longtime reader (CS) has written in with this question: if you could get rid of Hitler or Stalin in their youth, who would you choose for the butcher’s block? It is a really easy question and the answer is, of course, Hitler. There is no question that the Nazi and Soviet governments were two […]

    Daily History Picture: War on Satan May 15, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: War on Satan

    In the eye…

    Kitchener Survives: Friend of a Friend May 15, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Kitchener Survives: Friend of a Friend

    One of the great British catastrophes of the Great War was the death of Lord Kitchener on the HMS Hampshire in the North Sea 5 June 1916, not a month before the Battle of the Somme began. Kitchener, famous  as British Secretary of War was a ruthless and effective warleader and understandably British public opinion […]

    Lost Book on Magical Chameleons May 14, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Lost Book on Magical Chameleons

    This blog has long championed the lost books of antiquity and the middle ages. But there have been few greater tragedies for the bizarrist, surely, than the disappearance of an early Greek volume entitled On the Power and the Nature of the Chameleon. The chameleon is to be found through large part of the Mediterranean […]

    Review: Teach Us to Sit Still May 13, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite
    Review: Teach Us to Sit Still

    Tim Parks, Teach Us to Sit Still Tim Parks is an acerbic and to this blogger’s tastes over-intellectualised British writer based in Verona northern Italy. He writes novels and, much more enjoyably, books explaining Italy to Anglo-Saxons: TP is one of those very rare foreigners who neither patronises nor idealises the bel paese.  Teach, however, […]

    Daily History Picture: Stalker! May 12, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Stalker!

    OK cinema, but what an amazing scene: Stalker, final scene. The girls moves the cups off the counter as the international plays! ‘From each according to his psychic abilities…’

    Notre Dame to Montmartre by Bird Wings in 1840 May 11, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Notre Dame to Montmartre by Bird Wings in 1840

    Beach tries not to exaggerate – at least in this place* – but of his forty odd flight stories this is perhaps his favourite. Not a mean feat given that those stories include flying Anglo-Saxon monks and Chinese kite men. We are in Paris in 1840 A man, carrying a large bundle, applied some days […]

    Daily History Picture: Queuing for Star Wars May 11, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Historical Pictures
    Daily History Picture: Queuing for Star Wars

    Those trousers, those beards, that hair…

    Mole-Like Familiar May 10, 2017

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Mole-Like Familiar

    There is a long tradition of witches having familiars, animals who act as a source of power, or perhaps the medium between the witch and the devil. Britain has rather few references to sabbats and witch orgies compared to continental witch trials: but it arguably has more familiars than French, German and Polish witch investigations. Here […]