Judith Flanders > Quotes

“The last refuge of the intelligentsia: when life gets too difficult, go find something to read.”
― Judith Flanders, A Murder of Magpies

“There are supposed to be endorphins or whatever that make you feel great when you exercise. I don't think I have any, because I only feel great when I'm lying on the sofa reading a book, possibly while simultaneously eating biscuits.”
― Judith Flanders, A Murder of Magpies

“Dickens' London was a place of the mind, but it was also a real place. Much of what we take today to be the marvellous imaginings of a visionary novelist turn out on inspection to be the reportage of a great observer.”
― Judith Flanders, The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens' London

“Vain people can't bear to be crossed. They are the center of their world, and if circumstances don't allow the world to meet their needs, then the circumstances need to be changed. Their actions appear proportionate to them because any situation where their needs aren't being met is an affront.”
― Judith Flanders, A Bed of Scorpions

“It is too easy to think that ‘science’ is what happens now, that modernity and scientific thought are inseparable. Yet as Laura Snyder so brilliantly shows in this riveting picture of the first heroic age, the nineteenth century saw the invention of the computer, of electrical impulses, the harnessing of the power of steam – the birth of railways, statistics and technology. In ‘The Philosophical Breakfast Club’ she draws an endearing – almost domestic – picture of four scientific titans, and shows how – through their very ‘clubbability’ – they created the scientific basis on which the modern world stands.”
― Judith Flanders, Inside the Victorian Home: A Portrait of Domestic Life in Victorian England

“Well some are born to be hanged, and some are not; and many of those who are not hanged are much worse than those who are.”
― Judith Flanders, The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime

“She looked at me as if I’d asked her to go and pluck another quill from the goose and sharpen its nib. A few”
― Judith Flanders, A Bed of Scorpions

“Now Santa put toys, fruit and nuts in the stockings of good children, while bad children got coal, or birch switches, which was better than back in Zurich, where bad children received horse manure and rotten vines (although not yet in stockings). In Zurich, Samichlaus also brought trees for all children, while in Germany the Christmas tree remained, for the moment, something for the prosperous and the urban. The less prosperous became familiar with the custom in institutions – in schools, hospitals, orphanages and the like – where they had become a feature of charitable giving: patrons and donors attended candle-lighting ceremonies, at which carols were sung and gifts were handed to the poor.”
― Judith Flanders, Christmas: A Biography

“the tree was a Weihnachtsbaum, or Tannenbaum, a Christmas or fir tree; Protestantism became ‘the Tannenbaum religion’, and the trees were sometimes Lutherbäume, [Martin] Luther trees. Where Catholic regions adopted the tree, it became a Christbaum, a Lichterbaum, or Lebensbaum, a tree of Christ, light, or life; Württemberg had Christkindleinsbäume, Christ child trees.”
― Judith Flanders, Christmas: A Biography

“By whatever name, and however displayed, by the 1770s and 1780s, trees were an integral part of the German Christmas, whether a small tree in a pot placed on a table, a fir-tree tip hanging point downwards from the ceiling, a tree, point upwards, with the end sharpened and spearing an apple, or, among Pietist or evangelical communities, branches decorated with candles and sweets placed on wooden pyramid frames. This German tradition travelled to England in the final quarter of the eighteenth century.”
― Judith Flanders, Christmas: A Biography

“All of this was overtaken in 1848, when the Illustrated London News published an engraving of Victoria and Albert beside a tabletop tree at Windsor. The accompanying text explained that this was the children’s tree, while the queen, the prince consort, the Duchess of Kent, and ‘the royal household’ all had their own, as well as additional trees in the dining-room.4 This single image cemented the Christmas tree in the popular consciousness, so much so that by 1861, the year of Albert’s death, it was firmly believed that this German prince had transplanted the custom to England with him when he married. In the USA, the engraving was rendered more democratic when Godey’s Lady’s Book, the bestselling monthly magazine in the country, reprinted it in 1850, merely removing Victoria’s jewellery and Albert’s sash and medals (as well as his moustache), and reducing the number of presents under the tree. The illustration was retitled ‘The Christmas Tree’, with no reference to royalty”
― Judith Flanders, Christmas: A Biography

“It reinforces a sense of safety, even of pleasure, to know that murder is possible, just not here. At the start of the nineteenth century, it was easy to think of murder that way.”
― Judith Flanders, The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime

“Fairs to raise funds for the abolitionist movement also advertised trees.”
― Judith Flanders, Christmas: A Biography

“Ben is twenty-six, and this is his first job. He is small, weedy, and terribly, terribly serious about his work. His. Not anyone else’s. He despises everyone else’s. He has, however, produced our only literary fiction in the last two years that has sold over five thousand copies, so people listen to him. Which is a pity, since he doesn’t really have anything to say.”
― Judith Flanders, A Murder of Magpies

“but it was almost repellent to distrust this courtly old man. Like kicking one of those white-whiskered, stately dogs that spend their days sunning themselves, but still feel obliged to creak to their feet to greet a newcomer.”
― Judith Flanders, A Murder of Magpies

“Trees were erected by German immigrants in Texas in the 1840s, and by the 1850s they had become naturalized and were decorated with local produce: moss, cotton, pecans, red pepper swags and, an American innovation, the popcorn string, as well as Old World red berries, biscuits and sweets.”
― Judith Flanders, Christmas: A Biography

“probably willed creases out of existence.”
― Judith Flanders, A Bed of Scorpions