Off to the Forest

Last weekend I spent a few days in Gloucester and the Forest of Dean for events related to my new book, The Most Remarkable Woman in England: Poison, Celebrity and the Trials of Beatrice Pace.

This was, in a sense, bringing the case back home to where it started: the curious death of Harry Pace that was the beginning of the whole mystery occurred at his home in Fetter Hill, in the Forest of Dean, and the trial of his widow Beatrice on a charge of having murdered him was held at the Shire Hall in Gloucester.

As some of you who have been following the matter might know, the book has been well-received, but it meant a lot to me to be able to present something about the case in such a local context.

On Friday, I gave an interview to BBC Radio Gloucestershire host Anna King. The interview ended up being a full quarter of an hour, and can be heard online till, I believe the end of the week. Info, links and an accompanying photo are available at the book-related blog.

On Saturday, I spent some time in Gloucester at the Waterstones on Eastgate Street, just down the street from the trial venue (the Shire Hall).

After that, I headed off to the Forest itself to give a talk to the Forest of Dean Local History Society (FODLHS) at its meeting in Bream.

I hadn't been quite sure what to expect from the FODLHS, but I went away being utterly impressed not only by their commitment to local history but to their organisational skills. Partly due to good promotion, there were nearly ninety people in attendance, and I spent a very enjoyable afternoon fielding questions from locals who were very interested in a sensational murder case that had had happened in their backyard.

Some more details on those events a (as well as a few photos) can also be found at the book-related blog.

To find out what people have been saying about The Most Remarkable Woman in England, see this page.

Faith and the 'drunken-faced knave'

The London Review of Books (25 Aug 2011) has an interesting review (sadly behind the subscriber wall) of what sounds like a fascinating book about early-modern English Christian beliefs.

Part of its fascination comes from its interest in explaining what we might call everyday belief, so how ordinary English people approached the Christian faith. Because it is based upon ecclesiastical court files it sounds like it has -- like all books based on court records -- a tendency to focus on situations in which, in one way or another, things go awry.

Hence, along with whatever else it tells us, the book apparently adds to our knowledge of early modern insults.

From the review:

Ecclesiastical courts enforced church attendance, Sabbath observance, the payment of tithes and sexual morality. In their records we overhear the voices of hundreds of ordinary men and women. A Somerset churchgoer in 1632 complains that ‘there was nothing done at prayer time in the said church of West Lidford but tooting upon the organs, and that it delighteth him as much to hear his horse fart as to hear the said organs go.’ In an argument with the parson of Dogmerfield in Hampshire over a tithe in 1581, Rowland Bowrer declares: ‘Thou art a covetous man … Go take Mother Canning by the cunt again!’ Haigh spends several pages on the insults suffered by clergymen, such as ‘stinking knave priest’, ‘scurvy, stinking, shitten boy’, ‘totter legged and pilled priest’, ‘Scottish jack’, ‘jack sauce and Welsh rogue’, ‘a runagately rogue and a prick-eared rogue’, ‘polled, scurvy, forward, wrangling priest’, ‘wrangler and prattler’, ‘black-coat knave’, ‘drunken-faced knave’ and ‘copper-nose priest’. 

I, for one, plan to incorporate '‘totter legged and pilled' into my arsenal of insults.

I mean: nobody (except perhaps certain early-modern scholars) is going to be expecting that.