The love of drinking was well-developed in the nineteenth-century Englishman. With chapters on port, claret, sherry, champagne, Burgundy, Madeira, wine cellars, glasses and butlers, Through a Glass Li
A book passionately defending balloon flight for human beings, celebrating the 175th anniversary of The London Library.The first balloon flight with passengers (a sheep, a duck, and a rooster) took pl
A book of boxing by one of the nineteenth-century stars, celebrating the 175th anniversary of The London Library.Ned Donnelly, a former prize fighter turned boxing instructor and author (with a lot of
A book of exploration and discovery, celebrating the 175th anniversary of The London Library.From young men seeking outdoor adventure to intrepid ladies of a certain age discovering other cultures, Vi
The London Library is the world's largest independent library. Founded in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle (in reaction to the "museum headache" brought on by the crowds in the British Museum Reading Room), it
Fat seemed to be getting fatter under Queen Victoria: Tweedledum and Tweedledee; Joe "the fat boy" in The Pickwick Papers; even the first known report of childhood obesity in 1859. But for the short,
At the turn of the (last) century, the world was changing rapidly. Trains were faster, cheaper and more comfortable than ever before. The new craze of bicycling had given men and women unprecedented i
The first bicycle was invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it wasn't until the 1890s that the craze really took off. This brought with it the fears, scaremongering, worries and unc
The 19th-century boom in mass tourism, fuelled by the introduction of the railways, brought with it the rise of travel writing. Guided excursions such as "Cook's Tours" (the first of which was led by
It was not easy to be a sportswoman at the end of the nineteenth century. Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, said in 1896: "No matter how toughened a sportswoman may be, her org
