Karen Dolby

Philip Larkin in his poem ‘Annus Mirabilis’

On the Nature of the Universe

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Governor Bradford wrote Of Plymouth Plantation as a detailed two-volume history.

The history of tattoos stretches back to the earliest days of mankind. The two oldest colour tattoos were found on a Stone Age man who died over 5,000 years ago and an ancient Egyptian priestess of the goddess Hathor dating back over four thousand years. Tattoos were well known in ancient Greece, although they were usually associated with slaves, and it is sometimes claimed that Anglo-Saxon kings were tattooed.

Heinrich Meibom’s 1639 work A Treatise on the Use of Flogging

Hogarth’s The Harlot’s Progress

pamphlet called The Life and Character of Moll King, late Mistress of King’s Coffee House in Covent Garden

A strange book was published in 1779 called The English Spy; or Secret Correspondence between Milord the Eye and Milord the Ear which offers a glimpse inside a Parisian brothel of the day.

Does it really matter what these affectionate people do – so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses?

Mrs Patrick Campbell