Archive - Free-Range History

March 2025

The historical treasure trove emerging from a family photography business

Known colloquially as 'Lewes' family album', the collection is significant not just to its hometown, but the field of photographic history at large.

Mar 21 •

Disguising science as watercolour instruction suitable for women

‘She’s an excellent example of a woman who pursued flower painting as a route to something else – in this case, scientific knowledge’.

Mar 7 •

History writing, history, and writing #2

Irish women, Neolithic people, colonisation, and Napolean.

Mar 1 •

February 2025

What happens on medieval pilgrimage, stays on medieval pilgrimage (NSFW-ish)

The idiom used by rugby teams, rock bands, and Las Vegas holidaymakers can also be applied to 14th and 15th century pilgrims on their religious…

Feb 21 •

The paintings that couldn’t save a marriage (even if they’d tried to, which we can’t definitively say they did)

The curious, significant history of a series of Tudor period artworks.

Feb 7 •

History writing, history, and writing #1

Books and archives, champagne, mythology, and the transmission of ideas.

Feb 1 •

January 2025

December 2024

Favourite sentences and paragraphs from stories I read this year (2024)

Disorderly notebooks, irregular libraries, typing monkeys, and trust in a bystander having a ciggie.

Dec 27, 2024 •

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