Stephen Basdeo is a historian and writer based in Leeds, UK. He is the author of several peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and popular history books.
Álvares de Azevedo’s Macário (1850) transforms the traditional tempter of Christian drama into a philosophical moral arbiter who performs God’s work in sifting the irredeemable from the earth. In Macário, then, the Devil emerges not as corrupter or tempter but as the play’s moral centre: urbane, eloquent, and disgusted by human hypocrisy and irreligiosity. His irony exposes the spiritual decay of a society already more corrupt than Hell itself.
“Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, Valour, and Marriage” was published in 1662 and celebrated England’s new queen from Portugal, Catherine of Braganza.
While editing Joseph Ritson’s Robin Hood (1795), I stumbled upon an unexpected reference to “the sweet science” of boxing. This small detail opens a window into Georgian England, where Ritson’s antiquarian scholarship met the vibrant popular culture of his age. His nod to “the boasted worthies of the knuckle” reminds us that Robin Hood was never just a medieval study—it was also a reflection of eighteenth-century London life, where learning, liberty, and pugilism could coexist.
Today, little survives of Wynken de Worde beyond his books and, in the case of Robin Hood, the words that still echo through the text that he helped to preserve. Yet his presses in Fleet Street and his generosity to fellow printers (Goes and Copland) shaped the version of Robin Hood that eighteenth-century antiquaries like Ritson rediscovered—and that we still recognise today. Every time the lytell geste is quoted or staged, we are hearing not just the voice of a now unnamed medieval poet but also the imprint of the enterprising immigrant printer who turned a forest legend into a bestseller in both his own and our time.
“JUPITER and JUNO, willing to do honour to the marriage of the two famous rivers, Thamesis and Rhine, employ their messengers severally, Mercury and Iris, for that purpose.”
In Harleian MS 367, which dates from the time of Henry VIII’s Reformation, in which the name of Robin Hood is used to satirise the Catholic Church and the Reformers.
Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), a conveyancer and passionate literary critic, significantly impacted the study of the Robin Hood legend with his 1795 work, “Robin Hood: A Collection of all the Ancient Poems.” His nephew, Joseph Frank, later edited Ritson’s works, updating and adapting them for contemporary audiences while preserving their scholarly essence.
The 1832 Reform Act was a turning point in British history and set Britain on the path to democracy; read all about it in this post.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that significant progress was made towards equal pay for British women. In 1968, female workers at the Ford Factory in Dagenham, a suburb of London, discovered that they were being paid 15% less than their male colleagues despite doing the same work.
“He is a scout and a pioneer, attacking force and army of occupation, all in one … they go out on long tours through the country, sleeping on the floors of native houses, enduring the most severe physical fatigue, exposed now to great frosts, now to terrible summer heat.”
“If Rome be earthly, why should any knee with bending adoration worship her? She’s vicious … Therefore ‘tis fitter I should reverence the thatched houses where the Britons dwell.”
The name of the Pinder to Wakefield locals is, as Shakespeare might say, ‘familiar in [their] mouths as household words’. The Pinders Fields, however, reveal an exciting history of rebellion, outlawry, and patriotism; so expressed in Robert Greene’s play in 1599 titled “The Pinner of Wakefield.”
“Vengeance! Vengeance! I will yet be avenged! In the meantime, let me seek an hour’s repose!”
One of the book’s central premises is therefore incorrect … Upon weak foundations and generalisations does Danahay and Howey’s Neo-Victorianism and Medievalism: Re-Appropriating the Victorian and Medieval Pasts (2024) begin.
Quintana, as one biographer states, was a native of Porto Alegre, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul—a place where I have spent a lot of time—and was born in 1906. The son of a pharmacist, as he grew up he found that his intellectual interests lay in the reading of European literature, and he learned to speak Spanish, and developed a good reading knowledge of French and some Russian.
“To arms, Citizens! To Arms!” was the cry of many of the now forgotten common people who fought for Brazilian independence, and whose writings are revealed by José Carvalho, Lucia Bastos, and Marcello Basile.
“Now I would hesitate to give this such a glowing and positive review. The reason for this is hinted at in the review above but never expanded upon; there is no discussion or G.R.R. Martin’s place in the long line of medievalism and fantasy authors which preceded him.”
Despite their history of suffering and oppression, Jewish people have always been resilient; always able to survive the worst that humanity has thrown at them and even come out of many of these experiences victorious.
In the university’s Espaço Cultural, there was a special exhibition on titled ‘Elas’ (the feminine plural form of ‘they’) which showcased the works of primarily (though not exclusively) Brazilian women artists from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.
“We know great exertions are wanted and we are, at all events, determined to stand or fall by the laws, liberties, and religion of our country.”
There is no moment which we can pinpoint and say: This was the birth of the Portuguese language. To fully know its history, we must start at the very beginning, the moment of the inception of all languages. In such a case, one could justifiably start at the Big Bang.
‘The streets of the towns [will be] bathed in light; green branches on the thresholds; all nations sisters; men just old men blessing children; the past loving the present; perfect liberty of thought; believers enjoying perfect equality … no more bloodshed, no more wars; happy mothers!’
How amazing it would be, Cooper mused, if we could trace our every single thought over our whole lifetimes. Yet he knew that such a thing wasn’t possible and that autobiographies shouldn’t necessarily be relied on to tell the whole truth, and this was one such question which bothered him as an autobiographer
‘In Buenos Aires, everyone wears Rosas’ symbol on their hatbands or buttonholes, the ladies as a ribbon in their hair. This symbol is a folded ribbon, bearing a portrait of the tyrant and the words “Federation or Death! Long Live the Restorer of Laws! Death to the Unitarian Savages!”