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Erddig: Home of the Spider Brusher
Who is the Spider Brusher? She is Jane Ebbrell, a beloved servant at the Welsh estate of Erddig, near Wrexham. Actually, she was more of an all-around housemaid, but she wielded a mean spider-brush...
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Happy International Cat Day!
Do cats deserve a day of their very own in the international calendar? Of course they do. A couple of years ago, wandering art museums in Amsterdam and Haarlem, I wrote about the many dogs that appear...
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More Lion Sightings with St. Jerome
I’m always on the lookout for images of St. Jerome and his lion. Legend has it that when the saint retreated to the wilderness to study and pray, he came upon a lion with a thorn in its paw. St....
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Palatial Bathrooms
I’m about to get on a plane, so naturally my thoughts turn to bathrooms. The bathroom is one of my main concerns when booking a place to stay. I’ll be in Scandinavia, a part of the world I’ve never...
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Kalmar Castle Doorways
Kalmar is a pretty town on the Swedish Baltic coast. It has a spectacular Renaissance castle on a site that was of strategic importance for many centuries, starting about 800 years ago. Naturally, it...
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Frederiksborg Castle: Renaissance in Knitting Needles
Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark is a riot of Renaissance elegance. A recent exhibit featured a jaw-dropping collection of hand-knitted ensembles based on the costumes in royal and noble portraits in...
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Art Nouveau Vikings at Frederiksborg
Frederiksborg Castle in Hillerod, Denmark houses tons of fine historic art, but one of my favorite pieces is pretty humble: it occupies a long lower-level hallway leading to the exit. From 1883-1886,...
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Lord Anglesey, A Man of Parts
Henry, the dashing 7th Marquess of Anglesey, came to mind this morning. In a burst of fall energy, I started madly cleaning out drawers, cupboards, closets and even the dreaded garage. I thought of...
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Plas Newydd: Royalty and Green Skilly
I admit to being a hopeless Anglophile. I can easily see myself sweeping down a grand staircase to greet visiting royalty, as the Angleseys of Plas Newydd in Wales did for centuries. The house has...
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Prince Henrik: The Ungrateful (Royal) Dead of Denmark?
Now I’ve heard the ultimate First-World problem: what if a man married a queen, naturally expecting that would make him a king, and had to settle for being a Prince Consort? Not even a King Consort?...
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Chirk Castle
Catching-up time: I’m off to England soon, so I’m posting about places I will not see because I’ve seen them before. For a hopeless Anglophile like me, England has way too many stellar sights. Chirk...
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The Ha-Ha at Chirk Castle
I’ll be the first to admit that it rains in England. So when visiting castles and stately homes, I often scurry through the gardens and take refuge inside. But the day I made it to Chirk Castle was...
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Topiaries and the Hound of Hades at Hever Castle
Apparently the art of topiary began under the Romans. Did Julius Caesar ever order up a topiary pig? This one lives on the grounds at Hever Castle, in Edenbridge. It’s about 30 miles south of London....
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British Hall Chairs: Putting Visitors in Their Place
If you turned up at the entrance to a grand home in Britain without an invitation, you’d likely be told to go around to the servants’ entrance. If you were obviously respectable and had a convincing...
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First Day of Spring
I think spring is coming late to England this year. I’ll be there soon, and I’m thinking there might still be snow in the ground. Or flooded spring rivers. Still, I’m hoping for tulips. They were...
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Penrhyn Castle: A Neo-Norman Victorian Fantasy
I can’t believe I even have a “least favorite” castle, but right now Penrhyn is it. Why would that be? Penrhyn is spectacular in every way. It was built to impress: a fabulous Victorian gingerbread...
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If It’s Tuesday, That Must Be Talleyrand
Or, Why You Might Not Want to Travel With Me. I’m nearing the end of a 9-day trip to France, and for sure I know I married the right guy all those years ago. He cheerfully drives anywhere, this time...
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If It’s Friday, This Must be Fontainebleau
I’m continuing a brief rundown of my 9-day chateau blitz in France, with individual posts to come! Above is Chateau de Chambord, which I think of as The Really Big One With the Spiky Roof. Francois I...
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Talleyrand’s Chateau de Valencay
“We need grand houses for people who occupy grand positions.” This remark, by Napoleon Bonaparte, was aimed straight at his Foreign Minister, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord in 1803. When...
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Anne of Brittany at Langeais: A Secret Royal Bride
At daybreak on the morning of December 6, 1491, the fourteen-year-old Duchess Anne of Brittany married the 21-year-old King Charles VIII of France in somewhat-rushed ceremony that had to be kept secret...
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