17th century… Robin Hood and his Crew of Soldiers (1660) 2 Apr 20202 Apr 2020 By Stephen Basdeo This is a précis of a chapter from my book Robin Hood: The Life and Legend of an Outlaw (2019), the Ebook of which is currently on…
16th Century… Gamaliel Ratsey (d.1605): The Man whose Life Kick-started the “True Crime” Genre 18 Mar 2020 By Stephen Basdeo Gamaliel Ratsey was born in Market Deeping, Lincolnshire, during the late sixteenth century.[1] Little is known of Ratsey’s early life; his father, Richard, and his wife had…
18th century… The Working Man’s Robin Hood: The Writings of Allan Cunningham (1784–1842) 24 Jan 202024 Jan 2020 By Stephen Basdeo In 1832, the publisher Charles Knight had a bright idea: every Saturday he would publish a new magazine which whose aim was to educate working-class readers about…
18th century… Robin Hood the Angry Letter Writer 9 Jun 2019 By Stephen Basdeo Many people have adopted the name of Robin Hood over the years. The most obvious ones which spring to mind are the men who appear in medieval…
18th century… Bandits and Robbers of India 9 Feb 20199 Feb 2019 By Stephen Basdeo During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British East India Company established a number of fortified trading settlements—“factories”—in various parts of the Indian subcontinent. The trading company…
14th Century… The Flemish Revolt: Pierce Egan’s “Quintin Matsys” (1838) 28 Dec 2018 By Stephen Basdeo Pierce Egan the Younger (1814–80) is one of my most favourite Victorian authors. The son of the more famous Regency journalist and writer, Pierce Egan (1772–1849), he…