It all streams past
To write about London and its rivers is to enter a crowded literary field. Many aspects of watery life in…
A scandalous success
When Caroline Sheridan married George Chapple Norton in 1827 she ceased to exist. According to the legal status quo, as…
The scrapheap of life
All it takes to turn a cast-off into a prized possession can be a bit of imagination. To a passerby,…
Does one have to dissect birds to write the biography of an ornithologist?
At first glance, the 17th-century natural historian Francis Willughby is an ideal subject for a biography. He lived in interesting…
