Susan Elkin
Join some Necrophiles on the Great Relic Crawl
Travel in Early Modern Europe
By Antoni Maczak
Polity Press 350pp £45 order from our bookshop
By Ursula Phillips (trans)
l could comfortably have slept with Fynes Moryson. We would never have bickered about the bedclothes. Professional traveller as he was, Moryson had the same problem with German beds in the early seventeenth century as I have in the late twentieth nearly everywhere:
‘Throughout all Germany they lodge between two feather beds... as well in summer as in winter. This kind of lodging were not incommodious in winter, if a man did lie alone: but since by the high way they force men to have bedfellowes, one side lies open to the cold by reason that the upper bed is narrow, so it cannot fall around about two, but leaves one side of them open to the wind and the weather. But in summer time this kind of lodging is unpleasant, keeping a man in a continual sweat from head to foote.’
The horrors of the duvet. You freeze in winter and boil in summer. How I sympathise. Montaigne, on the other hand, was stoically true to form. While his boss tolerantly observed the customs of the places he visited – such as Germany in 1580 – Montaigne’s secretary noted that:
‘Monsieur de
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Within hours, the news spread. A grimy gang of desperadoes had been captured just in time to stop them setting out on an assassination plot of shocking audacity.'
@katheder on the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/butchers-knives-treason-and-plot
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger