Clip of the Week: April 6, 2022

Somebody never learned the Golden Rule: “Mark Twain insists [in his 1909 book Is Shakespeare Dead?] that [Sir Francis] Bacon wrote Shakespeare,” says the Youngstown Telegram. A hundred years or so from now somebody may be insisting that George Bernard Shaw wrote “Huckleberry Finn;” and we know Mark would not relish that idea. – The Read More

Madame Palatine’s Burn Book, Part 3

Welcome! If you haven’t yet read Part 1 and Part 2, click there and then come back to fully appreciate Liselotte’s salacious gossip. Don’t be fooled: Madame Palatine, aka Liselotte, may look like a sweet, doting grandmother, but her dirt is as vicious as Regina George’s, as scandalous as Gossip Girl’s and as dangerous as Read More

Madame Palatine’s Burn Book, Part 2

Bonjour! If you haven’t yet read Part 1, start there for the full scoop on Liselotte and her clique. Last time, we patiently listened, er, read as Madame Palatine, aka Liselotte, vented in her 18th-century correspondence about her daddy issues, disobedient son and cringeworthy views on women in power. With all those grudges, how did Read More

Madame Palatine’s Burn Book, Part 1

She is a wicked devil; treacherous in every way, and of a very dangerous temper. Upon the whole, she is not good for much. – Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d’Orléans, Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV and of the Regency, 1899 If you enjoyed the movie “Mean Girls” as much as teenage me did, allow me Read More

Beginner’s Guide to Travel Writing

In her nearly 15 years crisscrossing England on horseback, Celia had survived roadside accidents, lousy weather and overpriced meals at the 17th-century version of a tourist trap—but highway men were a first. A few miles outside the town of Whitchurch in Shropshire, two men had burst from the dense woods and onto the road. Judging Read More