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If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home
Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did Samuel Pepys never give his mistresses an orgasm? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two "dirty centuries"? Why did gas lighting cause Victorian ladies to faint? Why, for centuries, did people fear fruit? All these questions will be answered in this juicy, smelly, and truly intimate history of home life. Lucy Worsley takes us through the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen, covering the architectural history of each room, but concentrating on what people actually did in bed, in the bath, at the table, and at the stove. From sauce-stirring to breast-feeding, teeth-cleaning to masturbation, getting dressed to getting married, this book will make you see your home with new eyes.
Praise for" If Walls Could Talk"
"Dr. Lucy Worsley charts the evolution of the British home ... It's a fascinating journey."-"Daily Mail" (UK )
"Anecdotes, jokes and fascinating facts come thick and fast ... Worsley's eye for quirky detail is so compelling you quickly find yourself gripped by the most unlikely subjects."-"Mail on Sunday" (UK )
"Saucy intimacies and salacious secrets ... I was glued."-"Country Life" (UK )
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First published January 1, 2011
730 people are currently reading
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About the author
Lucy Worsley
33 books2,974 followersI was born in Reading (not great, but it could have been Slough), studied Ancient and Modern History at New College, Oxford, and I've got a PhD in art history from the University of Sussex.
My first job after leaving college was at a crazy but wonderful historic house called Milton Manor in Oxfordshire. Here I would give guided tours, occasionally feed the llamas, and look for important pieces of paper that my boss Anthony had lost. Soon after that I moved to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, in the lovely job for administrator of the Wind and Watermills Section. Here I helped to organise that celebrated media extravaganza, National Mills Day. I departed for English Heritage in 1997, first as an Assistant Inspector and then as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings; Bolsover Castle, Hardwick Old Hall, and Kirby Hall were my favourite properties there. In 2002 I made a brief excursion to Glasgow Museums before coming down to London as Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces in 2003. Yes, this is a brilliant job, but no, you can’t have it. (Bribes have been offered, and refused.)
You might also catch me presenting history films on the old goggle box, giving the talks on the cruise ship Queen Mary 2, or slurping cocktails.
***
Lucy Worsley, OBE (born 18 December 1973) is an English historian, author, curator, and television presenter.
Worsley is Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces but is best known as a presenter of BBC Television series on historical topics, including Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (2011), Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls (2012), The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (2014), A Very British Romance (2015), Lucy Worsley: Mozart’s London Odyssey (2016), and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley (2016).
-From Wikipedia
My first job after leaving college was at a crazy but wonderful historic house called Milton Manor in Oxfordshire. Here I would give guided tours, occasionally feed the llamas, and look for important pieces of paper that my boss Anthony had lost. Soon after that I moved to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, in the lovely job for administrator of the Wind and Watermills Section. Here I helped to organise that celebrated media extravaganza, National Mills Day. I departed for English Heritage in 1997, first as an Assistant Inspector and then as an Inspector of Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings; Bolsover Castle, Hardwick Old Hall, and Kirby Hall were my favourite properties there. In 2002 I made a brief excursion to Glasgow Museums before coming down to London as Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces in 2003. Yes, this is a brilliant job, but no, you can’t have it. (Bribes have been offered, and refused.)
You might also catch me presenting history films on the old goggle box, giving the talks on the cruise ship Queen Mary 2, or slurping cocktails.
***
Lucy Worsley, OBE (born 18 December 1973) is an English historian, author, curator, and television presenter.
Worsley is Joint Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces but is best known as a presenter of BBC Television series on historical topics, including Elegance and Decadence: The Age of the Regency (2011), Harlots, Housewives and Heroines: A 17th Century History for Girls (2012), The First Georgians: The German Kings Who Made Britain (2014), A Very British Romance (2015), Lucy Worsley: Mozart’s London Odyssey (2016), and Six Wives with Lucy Worsley (2016).
-From Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 705 reviews
September 1, 2012
I am only on page 36 and am already pretty frustrated with this, and I may or may not keep reading. This is exactly the type of chatty, sociological survey that I adore, but I also adore proper citations in my non-fiction.
For this book, there's a bibliography, there's a topical index, but there are NO FOOTNOTES. If you tell me that a medieval travel guide used certain phrases, then I want to know what travel guide it was, I don't want to have to pour through the bibliography hoping to stumble across it. If you tell me that most people in England use duvets rather than sheets and blankets, I want to know sales figures that back this up, because I'm over here in the US and this is not necessarily what I see represented in movies, TV shows, and books. And if you're going to tell me that the origin of the phrase "sleep tight" has to do with the sagging ropes in medieval bed frames, you're just wrong, because a search will show that the OED doesn't record that phrase until 1933, and a couple easily-found articles offer an alternate, research-supported theory that you don't even mention in your text.
There are some fascinating pieces of information and interesting suppositions in this book so far, but frankly I am going to have to take everything else in the book with a grain of salt. Boo.
For this book, there's a bibliography, there's a topical index, but there are NO FOOTNOTES. If you tell me that a medieval travel guide used certain phrases, then I want to know what travel guide it was, I don't want to have to pour through the bibliography hoping to stumble across it. If you tell me that most people in England use duvets rather than sheets and blankets, I want to know sales figures that back this up, because I'm over here in the US and this is not necessarily what I see represented in movies, TV shows, and books. And if you're going to tell me that the origin of the phrase "sleep tight" has to do with the sagging ropes in medieval bed frames, you're just wrong, because a search will show that the OED doesn't record that phrase until 1933, and a couple easily-found articles offer an alternate, research-supported theory that you don't even mention in your text.
There are some fascinating pieces of information and interesting suppositions in this book so far, but frankly I am going to have to take everything else in the book with a grain of salt. Boo.
September 5, 2012
A very lightweight treatment of a very interesting subject.
It turns out that the book is an accompaniment to a television program of the same name that was shown on the BBC. And it reads as such. There are four main sections, looking at the bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. Within each section there are little bits related to those areas - some are only a page or two, some a little longer. They are written in a very conversational style, and while I'm sure Dr. Worsley has an appropriately British accent, I can almost hear the Valley Girl uptalk ending each sentence. Any historian brings their modern, contemporary voice to their work, but Dr Worsley's often flippant tone does not make me take her work seriously.
The book is lacking many conventions of non-fiction writing - proper footnoting being a major omission. If facts and references to people and publications are going to be used then we really need citations to those items. Perhaps the publisher wanted to keep things 'light' and user friendly and not too serious. Well, popular history can be accurate and precise without being tedious.
Dr. Worsley has excellent qualifications and works in this field. I appreciate the desire to be approachable and easy to read. But this could have been so much better, so much more interesting. It is also Very Much a British book. For someone reading from the other side of the pond there are statements after statements given as unequivocal facts of modern life that really need to have 'in the United Kingdom' added to them, as these are not universal truths (see her discussion of modern bed linens, for example.)
If you want to see how this material can be handled in a fascinating way try Bill Bryson's book 'At Home'. Not only does he cover the same issues he manages to capture the wonder of human ingenuity as applied to that most basic of human desires - the desire for a home.
It turns out that the book is an accompaniment to a television program of the same name that was shown on the BBC. And it reads as such. There are four main sections, looking at the bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. Within each section there are little bits related to those areas - some are only a page or two, some a little longer. They are written in a very conversational style, and while I'm sure Dr. Worsley has an appropriately British accent, I can almost hear the Valley Girl uptalk ending each sentence. Any historian brings their modern, contemporary voice to their work, but Dr Worsley's often flippant tone does not make me take her work seriously.
The book is lacking many conventions of non-fiction writing - proper footnoting being a major omission. If facts and references to people and publications are going to be used then we really need citations to those items. Perhaps the publisher wanted to keep things 'light' and user friendly and not too serious. Well, popular history can be accurate and precise without being tedious.
Dr. Worsley has excellent qualifications and works in this field. I appreciate the desire to be approachable and easy to read. But this could have been so much better, so much more interesting. It is also Very Much a British book. For someone reading from the other side of the pond there are statements after statements given as unequivocal facts of modern life that really need to have 'in the United Kingdom' added to them, as these are not universal truths (see her discussion of modern bed linens, for example.)
If you want to see how this material can be handled in a fascinating way try Bill Bryson's book 'At Home'. Not only does he cover the same issues he manages to capture the wonder of human ingenuity as applied to that most basic of human desires - the desire for a home.
January 14, 2021
Такое чувство, что серфишь по википедии, только с периодическими включениями в личный опыт автора статей. Причем после смехотворной этимологии выражения sleep tight (в самом начале книги!) даже и не знаю, можно ли всему остальному верить, а я не люблю читать нон-фикшен, которому нет 100% доверия -- не в смысле достоверности фактов, а в смысле того, что автор и научный редактор сделали все, что в их силах, чтобы заявленные факты проверить и подтвердить источниками, пусть даже не указывая их в сносках.
December 7, 2014
If Walls Could Talk isn’t exactly an academic, peer reviewed, footnoted piece of work, but it is kinda fun as a light read. Some of her etymological claims seem a bit spurious, some I’m sure I’ve heard debunked elsewhere, but it’s entertaining nonetheless. I think it could’ve been more interesting if she’d gone more into the things she experienced for herself like sleeping on a rope bed, blacking a range, etc, etc. That’s a perspective most of us don’t know anything about, and which she couldn’t have got wrong since it’s down to experience.
At least unlike some other popular non-fiction writers, she doesn’t get too giggly or avoidant about some of the topics that inevitably come up: sex, sanitation, death, childbirth, etc, etc.
Oh, and someone else quite rightly pointed out that she’s really talking about English houses. Not a single mention of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. I believe there were some significant differences…
At least unlike some other popular non-fiction writers, she doesn’t get too giggly or avoidant about some of the topics that inevitably come up: sex, sanitation, death, childbirth, etc, etc.
Oh, and someone else quite rightly pointed out that she’s really talking about English houses. Not a single mention of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. I believe there were some significant differences…
July 14, 2019
Chock full of fascinating anecdotes, If Walls Could Talk is an engaging history of domestic life in the Western World. Curious about the origins of the phrase "chairman of the board"? Ever wonder when the fork came into use? Would you believe a Mr. Crapper was instrumental in the widespread production of toilets? At turns whimsical and amusing, this intimate history of the home is that rarity among history books: a fabulous page-turner.
April 25, 2012
IF WALLS COULD TALK is a fascinating social history of the home. Written in a very chatty and informal manner, it is a breezy read that even the most history-adverse will find fun and easy to get through.
A few caveats, however:
1) This is about the BRITISH home. Actually, to be even more specific, it is about the ENGLISH home, as Scotland, Wales and Ireland are barely mentioned.
American (not to mention non-Western hemisphere) domestic dwellings and habits evolved differently. And while the United States is mentioned more often than other European or indeed, other UK countries, many of the conclusions drawn pertain specifically to England. For example, Worsley ends her chapter on bed furnishings with a rapturous appreciation for Terence Conran (a kind of British Swinging Sixties Martha Stewart, with more emphasis on home furnishings than crafts) and the ubiquitous duvet, which has made top sheets, blankets and bedspreads obsolete.
Which comes as news to American households, where the top sheet still holds sway. And while duvets are certainly common, bedspreads and quilts are also still very much in use. And did you know Americans store their hopes and dreams in closets? Here I thought my closets mostly held clothes, bed linens - have to store the top sheets somewhere - and far too much junk. (British homes, in general, don't have closets. Yes, it shocked me, too, when I moved there. But Worsley never mentions the British equivalent, which is the box room.)
Having lived in London for five years, I spotted the differences immediately. Alas, Worsley seems to have little knowledge of the US, aside from that gleaned from Thanksgiving episodes of American sitcoms shown on British telly, so her US references and conclusions are a bit off.
Still, if you are at all interested in English social history (and I am), this book is a must.
2) This book is about the HOME. Y'know, the place where you do all the things in private that you would not dream of doing in public (although Worsley does walk through how the notion of privacy - and therefore the home - has changed over the centuries).
Therefore, Worsley is not squeamish about activities that take place in the home. And that includes sex, masturbation, bodily waste evacuation, farting, bathing, childbirth, death, and many more topics that were deemed too indelicate for Victorian female ears. Luckily, while I am female, I am not Victorian, and I thought Worsley did a splendid job of walking the line between being forthright but nowhere near gross. We're all human, and these are basic human functions. And it's fascinating how social mores and ideas of acceptable social behavior have changed over time.
However, if your ears and eyes would prefer to read like it is 1888, then perhaps this isn't the book for you.
A few caveats, however:
1) This is about the BRITISH home. Actually, to be even more specific, it is about the ENGLISH home, as Scotland, Wales and Ireland are barely mentioned.
American (not to mention non-Western hemisphere) domestic dwellings and habits evolved differently. And while the United States is mentioned more often than other European or indeed, other UK countries, many of the conclusions drawn pertain specifically to England. For example, Worsley ends her chapter on bed furnishings with a rapturous appreciation for Terence Conran (a kind of British Swinging Sixties Martha Stewart, with more emphasis on home furnishings than crafts) and the ubiquitous duvet, which has made top sheets, blankets and bedspreads obsolete.
Which comes as news to American households, where the top sheet still holds sway. And while duvets are certainly common, bedspreads and quilts are also still very much in use. And did you know Americans store their hopes and dreams in closets? Here I thought my closets mostly held clothes, bed linens - have to store the top sheets somewhere - and far too much junk. (British homes, in general, don't have closets. Yes, it shocked me, too, when I moved there. But Worsley never mentions the British equivalent, which is the box room.)
Having lived in London for five years, I spotted the differences immediately. Alas, Worsley seems to have little knowledge of the US, aside from that gleaned from Thanksgiving episodes of American sitcoms shown on British telly, so her US references and conclusions are a bit off.
Still, if you are at all interested in English social history (and I am), this book is a must.
2) This book is about the HOME. Y'know, the place where you do all the things in private that you would not dream of doing in public (although Worsley does walk through how the notion of privacy - and therefore the home - has changed over the centuries).
Therefore, Worsley is not squeamish about activities that take place in the home. And that includes sex, masturbation, bodily waste evacuation, farting, bathing, childbirth, death, and many more topics that were deemed too indelicate for Victorian female ears. Luckily, while I am female, I am not Victorian, and I thought Worsley did a splendid job of walking the line between being forthright but nowhere near gross. We're all human, and these are basic human functions. And it's fascinating how social mores and ideas of acceptable social behavior have changed over time.
However, if your ears and eyes would prefer to read like it is 1888, then perhaps this isn't the book for you.
March 22, 2022
Это фантастически познавательная книга. Мы знаем историю по войнам, территориальным завоеваниям, бунтам и восстаниям, различным героическим событиям, но мы практически не знаем о том, как был устроен быт. Люси Уорсли восполняет этот пробел хотя бы в отношении Англии. Может настоящая история и состоит из истории домов, а не истории героев.
November 19, 2019
If Walls Could Talk is a mostly enjoyable, frothy look at the history of the home. In England. The book is based on Worsley's experiences as a working historian in a variety on historical homes in England, and so it could be expected that the book would focus on English homes. It does, however, do this to the exclusion of all but the most passing mentions of homes elsewhere, and this does the book a great disservice. A far more interesting (and admittedly, ambitious) project would have been a more general introduction to the history and function of the the home in societies around the world.
The book is interesting on its own merits, but by the way it was framed (and also other small things, such as the lack of in-text citations or notes) made me aware of its shortcomings in a way that more intelligent metadata would have negated. If you are interested in the piecemeal development of various (English) household rooms in a conversational tone then you will love this book. If you are after something a little more rigorous/academic/general then I suggest you look elsewhere.
The book is interesting on its own merits, but by the way it was framed (and also other small things, such as the lack of in-text citations or notes) made me aware of its shortcomings in a way that more intelligent metadata would have negated. If you are interested in the piecemeal development of various (English) household rooms in a conversational tone then you will love this book. If you are after something a little more rigorous/academic/general then I suggest you look elsewhere.
October 10, 2017
This is not a scholarly tome, you don't get bogged down with details. This is a chatty, tour guide type tale of the history of the house. The house in England, I am sure there are hundreds of different stories about houses around the world but they aren't in this book. I am not complaining I am just explaining what you get.
Instead of starting at the beginning and working her way to the end, she separates out individual aspects of the home and follows its iteration from the Norman Conquest through modernity. And honestly this is another one of those books that makes me fall to knees and give praise that I was born in the second 1/2 of the 20th century.
There were several tidbits that really tantalized me. 'by the mid-1960s 61% of London households had refrigerators' - I don't think I even met anyone who didn't have a refrigerator. Now I guess if you take into consideration boarders and bedsits it makes sense.
'During the Tudor period seabirds were considered fish rather than flesh' So you could eat puffins on Fridays. 'In Tudor or Stuart times, between a quarter and a half of the entire population were employed in domestic service at some point in their lives' which made me think of the fast food industry today.
At the end of the book Lucy shares her predictions for peak oil and global warming which really made me scratch my head.
Instead of starting at the beginning and working her way to the end, she separates out individual aspects of the home and follows its iteration from the Norman Conquest through modernity. And honestly this is another one of those books that makes me fall to knees and give praise that I was born in the second 1/2 of the 20th century.
There were several tidbits that really tantalized me. 'by the mid-1960s 61% of London households had refrigerators' - I don't think I even met anyone who didn't have a refrigerator. Now I guess if you take into consideration boarders and bedsits it makes sense.
'During the Tudor period seabirds were considered fish rather than flesh' So you could eat puffins on Fridays. 'In Tudor or Stuart times, between a quarter and a half of the entire population were employed in domestic service at some point in their lives' which made me think of the fast food industry today.
At the end of the book Lucy shares her predictions for peak oil and global warming which really made me scratch my head.
October 22, 2017
Pretty good micro history of the home!! It's packed with cool trivia about everyday items, expressions and duties. The Medieval times were by far the most interesting! It covers the evolution of the home right up to modern day's environmental issues in a concise conclusion.
March 22, 2021
I haven't watched the TV series associated with 'If Walls Could Talk', but can imagine it was both fun and fascinating. This wide-ranging book is concerned with how the use of rooms in the UK home has changed over the centuries. It touches on many areas of social, political, and technological history, intersecting with more specific history books like At Day's Close: Night in Times Past and Brilliant: The Evolution of Artificial Light. I would have been delighted had it been twice as long with a great deal more detail, although I enjoyed what there was a great deal. The structuring by room (bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen) worked very well. One important theme is how technologies were only taken up once social and practical conditions allowed it. For example, the flushing toilet existed for several centuries before becoming popular, as wide adoption required piped water infrastructure. I was fascinated to learn about London's early piped water infrastructure, consisting of above-ground pipes made of elm wood. With no pumps, this allowed for only a limited, low pressure water supply to those who could afford it. An impressive achievement nonetheless. Other labour-saving technologies like washing machines spread only when it became expensive and difficult to employ servants. This history broadly chronicles falling numbers of people and rising numbers of machines in the home.
Worsley draws upon a wide range of sources and includes an appealing selection of illustrations. Her writing style is very readable and engaging. The areas that particularly interested me tended to be those I hadn't really read about before. The history of vegetables and fruit eaten in Britain was intriguing. I hadn't realised that sweet potatoes arrived here before standard potatoes. Nor that raw fruit and vegetables were (reasonably enough) considered risky in Medieval and Tudor times, thus repeatedly cooked before being eaten. I also didn't know that bathhouses were popular in medieval times, before falling into disfavour in Tudor times and staying there for several centuries. Moreover, having fleas in your clothes was considered unavoidable, while lice were a sign of poor personal hygiene.
One of the pleasures of reading history books is observing how they have aged. 'If Walls Could Talk' was published in 2012, yet I noted two examples of this. Worsley comments briefly on the future of the home, mentioning 'when the oil runs out' several times. That phrasing sounds strangely old-fashioned to my ears, now we know that there is far more oil than we can possibly burn without locking in catastrophic climate change. Now I'd be inclined to say, 'when we stop burning fossil fuels'. Secondly and more significantly, there is the pandemic's impact. At one point, Worsley comments on how miasma theory used to influence building design in centuries past. Given that COVID-19 has brought back the fear of miasma with actual scientific support, I wonder if fresh air will once again become a vital home design consideration. Moreover, the return of work to the home during successive lockdowns recalls the centuries before factories, offices, and the Industrial Revolution. In the 21th century, though, home working remains controlled and structured by capitalism despite this ostensible decentralisation of location. Rooms in our homes have had to take on new and unexpected roles in the past year. My living room/kitchen/dining room (the same room) became my lecture room, office, and library. I've since moved my office into the box room, having realised its small size and absence of windows are if anything advantageous to concentration. This space was previously a spare bedroom for visitors, which obviously hasn't been required for a year. It will be fascinating to observe the long-term consequences of the pandemic for our homes and how we live in them.
Worsley draws upon a wide range of sources and includes an appealing selection of illustrations. Her writing style is very readable and engaging. The areas that particularly interested me tended to be those I hadn't really read about before. The history of vegetables and fruit eaten in Britain was intriguing. I hadn't realised that sweet potatoes arrived here before standard potatoes. Nor that raw fruit and vegetables were (reasonably enough) considered risky in Medieval and Tudor times, thus repeatedly cooked before being eaten. I also didn't know that bathhouses were popular in medieval times, before falling into disfavour in Tudor times and staying there for several centuries. Moreover, having fleas in your clothes was considered unavoidable, while lice were a sign of poor personal hygiene.
One of the pleasures of reading history books is observing how they have aged. 'If Walls Could Talk' was published in 2012, yet I noted two examples of this. Worsley comments briefly on the future of the home, mentioning 'when the oil runs out' several times. That phrasing sounds strangely old-fashioned to my ears, now we know that there is far more oil than we can possibly burn without locking in catastrophic climate change. Now I'd be inclined to say, 'when we stop burning fossil fuels'. Secondly and more significantly, there is the pandemic's impact. At one point, Worsley comments on how miasma theory used to influence building design in centuries past. Given that COVID-19 has brought back the fear of miasma with actual scientific support, I wonder if fresh air will once again become a vital home design consideration. Moreover, the return of work to the home during successive lockdowns recalls the centuries before factories, offices, and the Industrial Revolution. In the 21th century, though, home working remains controlled and structured by capitalism despite this ostensible decentralisation of location. Rooms in our homes have had to take on new and unexpected roles in the past year. My living room/kitchen/dining room (the same room) became my lecture room, office, and library. I've since moved my office into the box room, having realised its small size and absence of windows are if anything advantageous to concentration. This space was previously a spare bedroom for visitors, which obviously hasn't been required for a year. It will be fascinating to observe the long-term consequences of the pandemic for our homes and how we live in them.
November 23, 2017
Мне очень понравилась книга, потому что от неё действительно трудно оторваться: написано живо, интересно и легко. Здесь собраны любопытные и удивительные факты о том, как жили британцы со Средних веков до наших дней: где спали, что ели, что носили, как рожали детей, готовили, вели хозяйство и так далее до всяких бытовых мелочей. Исключительно увлекательное чтение.
Почитала отзывы и некоторые ругают книгу за отсутствие сносок и указания авторства цитат, но если бы они дочитали до заключения, то поняли бы, что это сделано намеренно. У меня не возникло претензий к книге в связи с этим.
Почитала отзывы и некоторые ругают книгу за отсутствие сносок и указания авторства цитат, но если бы они дочитали до заключения, то поняли бы, что это сделано намеренно. У меня не возникло претензий к книге в связи с этим.
September 21, 2022
3.5 stars
I can't think of a better century to be alive in, than this one.
Worsley takes us from the 16th century up to almost current in her wanderings through the home. We are privy to bathrooms, bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens and their respective changes from Medieval times to modern day. And how people used these rooms and their varying appliances.
From a history of sleep, sex, knickers, teeth brushing, the history of toilet paper, heat and light, speaking to servants, kissing and courtships, chewing, swallowing, burping and farting, to dying and funerals - this book touches on just about everything. With many pictures and sketches scattered within.
Using a lot of humor this book reveals the good, the bad and the "are you kidding me" of rooms through time and how we dress them up and use them. This being grounded in a British house, which spun a BBC series, is a bit different than the progression of the American home. However it was a fun trip seeing how the other half lived - or lives.
I can't think of a better century to be alive in, than this one.
Worsley takes us from the 16th century up to almost current in her wanderings through the home. We are privy to bathrooms, bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens and their respective changes from Medieval times to modern day. And how people used these rooms and their varying appliances.
From a history of sleep, sex, knickers, teeth brushing, the history of toilet paper, heat and light, speaking to servants, kissing and courtships, chewing, swallowing, burping and farting, to dying and funerals - this book touches on just about everything. With many pictures and sketches scattered within.
Using a lot of humor this book reveals the good, the bad and the "are you kidding me" of rooms through time and how we dress them up and use them. This being grounded in a British house, which spun a BBC series, is a bit different than the progression of the American home. However it was a fun trip seeing how the other half lived - or lives.
February 5, 2023
This book was both educational and highly entertaining. An absolutely great read.
May 29, 2012
One of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson, had recently published a book in which he takes readers on a tour of his house, examining the history of each object in it. Since I love Bryson's writing style and enjoy learning interesting facts about random objects, this was a book that I was really looking forward to reading. Unfortunately the book wasn't quite what I had expected and after a couple of chapters I set it down permanently. Shortly afterwards I came across If Walls Could Talk, which sounded a lot like what I had been hoping Bryson's book, At Home, would be like, so I decided to give it a try. This time the book didn't get put down for several days, at which point everyone around me was sick of hearing about the history of beds, how closets came to exist and how Tudor maids removed stains from clothes (with urine!). But if you are the kind of person who enjoys such facts, I'm sure you'll love this book as much as I did.
I was particularly interested in discovering the origins for many of the customs and beliefs that I had heard of but didn't know the source for. For example, while I knew that in Renaissance England it was fashionable to wear white collars and shirt cuffs I didn't know that the purpose of this was to publicize the wearer's cleanliness, at a time when bathing was out of fashion. It was fascinating to discover the way that so many of the customs and behaviors of the past shaped the way that we live today.
I was slightly disappointed that Worsley doesn't go into any depth about her research in writing the book since she mentions that she had actually tried out for herself many of the practices that she discusses here, from sleeping in a rope bed to washing laundry, Tudo style. I would really have enjoyed reading about these experiences and the conclusions she came to, so I felt a bit let down that they weren't included in the book. Though I hadn't realized at the time that If Walls Could Talk is also a program on BBC, and I expect that Worsley discusses her experiences a bit more on that show, which I definitely intend to track down.
I was particularly interested in discovering the origins for many of the customs and beliefs that I had heard of but didn't know the source for. For example, while I knew that in Renaissance England it was fashionable to wear white collars and shirt cuffs I didn't know that the purpose of this was to publicize the wearer's cleanliness, at a time when bathing was out of fashion. It was fascinating to discover the way that so many of the customs and behaviors of the past shaped the way that we live today.
I was slightly disappointed that Worsley doesn't go into any depth about her research in writing the book since she mentions that she had actually tried out for herself many of the practices that she discusses here, from sleeping in a rope bed to washing laundry, Tudo style. I would really have enjoyed reading about these experiences and the conclusions she came to, so I felt a bit let down that they weren't included in the book. Though I hadn't realized at the time that If Walls Could Talk is also a program on BBC, and I expect that Worsley discusses her experiences a bit more on that show, which I definitely intend to track down.
March 9, 2012
One can tell when reading this book that the author had a great time and a fascination for her subject. Although comparisons can be made to Bryson's "At Home", I found this book to be less rambling and more centered. She takes the major rooms of the house and traces them and everything that goes on in them from dressing, underwear (or lack of such)to chamber pots. She also traces the different time periods and shows how they and the people in them have changed. It is mostly her writing style though that draws the reader in and makes them privy to all she chooses to impart, with a great deal of humor thrown in.
August 15, 2013
Those who heavily read historical-related material are familiar with “odd” rooms, items, and even customs in the common household of the past. However, just how much do you know about the evolution of such things as: toilets or toilet paper, a hair dresser, or a fork? Lucy Worsley, known to BBC audiences for her television host work as the Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, reveals the hidden “lives” of our homes in “If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home”.
“If Walls Could Talk” is divided into four parts (bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen) with each being further sub-divided into ‘sections’ or chapters studying items, furniture, customs, decorations, etc; which occupies the respective rooms. If you can think of it, Worsley examines it. However, each section is somewhat too general which is obviously a result of investigating a much too large breadth of topics.
Worsley’s writing style is easy-to-read and accessible with a friendly and modern tone. One can almost here her hosting a television program (note: I have never seen her work). Sometimes, this can be too informal, which when accompanied by the lack of proper research endnotes; makes “If Walls Could Talk” a light read (although that isn’t necessarily a bad thing). Even despite proper references, “If Walls Could Talk” is a great resource for those setting historical scenes (I realized many errors in historical fiction books I have read due to Worsley’s research).
“If Walls Could Talk” suffers from a consistency issue as some areas are drastically more detailed than others, creating an up-and-down pace with a waxing-and-weaning content strength. Regardless, Worsley still reveals many interesting and notable factoids of information worth repeating, some being new even to history buffs.
Worsely indicates the goal of not merely penning a social history work but also relating the evolutionary changes to today’s daily lives which she doesn’t necessarily achieve. Also, each “part” ends with an individual topic but would have flowed more smoothly with a summary/conclusion of the room detailed.
As other reviewers have noted, there is a slight disconnect for non-British readers as Worsley alludes to modern British life which has discrepancies with lives in America. On the other hand, “If Walls Could Talk” is up-to-date with many modern references such as cell phone photos.
“If Walls Could Talk” periodically makes references to Worsley’s television program and her actions therein. Even if the book is somewhat of a supplement to the program; this is unnecessary and also doesn’t mesh well nor makes sense in placement. Although not a major issue, it could be omitted. Also up for omission is Worsley’s tendency of insulting or complimenting historical figures. This feels unprofessional, speculative, and unrelated to the historical mirth of “If Walls Could Talk”. A lot of repetition is evident, as Worsley describes and defines certain terms word-for-word in various sections almost like they are copy/pasted.
Worsley’s conclusion is rather interesting and harks on the topic of depleting natural resources and what can be learned from the past to improve sustainability. “If Walls Could Talk” therefore circles the past well with the present.
Despite my seemingly strong complaints, “If Walls Could Talk” is an interesting piece with supplemental photos and color plates which will aid history writers or those newer to the study of history. Although I didn’t feel I learned too much; the reading was enjoyable and I will read Worsley again. “If Walls Could Talk” isn’t terrible and is recommended; but is an average read, in my opinion.
“If Walls Could Talk” is divided into four parts (bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen) with each being further sub-divided into ‘sections’ or chapters studying items, furniture, customs, decorations, etc; which occupies the respective rooms. If you can think of it, Worsley examines it. However, each section is somewhat too general which is obviously a result of investigating a much too large breadth of topics.
Worsley’s writing style is easy-to-read and accessible with a friendly and modern tone. One can almost here her hosting a television program (note: I have never seen her work). Sometimes, this can be too informal, which when accompanied by the lack of proper research endnotes; makes “If Walls Could Talk” a light read (although that isn’t necessarily a bad thing). Even despite proper references, “If Walls Could Talk” is a great resource for those setting historical scenes (I realized many errors in historical fiction books I have read due to Worsley’s research).
“If Walls Could Talk” suffers from a consistency issue as some areas are drastically more detailed than others, creating an up-and-down pace with a waxing-and-weaning content strength. Regardless, Worsley still reveals many interesting and notable factoids of information worth repeating, some being new even to history buffs.
Worsely indicates the goal of not merely penning a social history work but also relating the evolutionary changes to today’s daily lives which she doesn’t necessarily achieve. Also, each “part” ends with an individual topic but would have flowed more smoothly with a summary/conclusion of the room detailed.
As other reviewers have noted, there is a slight disconnect for non-British readers as Worsley alludes to modern British life which has discrepancies with lives in America. On the other hand, “If Walls Could Talk” is up-to-date with many modern references such as cell phone photos.
“If Walls Could Talk” periodically makes references to Worsley’s television program and her actions therein. Even if the book is somewhat of a supplement to the program; this is unnecessary and also doesn’t mesh well nor makes sense in placement. Although not a major issue, it could be omitted. Also up for omission is Worsley’s tendency of insulting or complimenting historical figures. This feels unprofessional, speculative, and unrelated to the historical mirth of “If Walls Could Talk”. A lot of repetition is evident, as Worsley describes and defines certain terms word-for-word in various sections almost like they are copy/pasted.
Worsley’s conclusion is rather interesting and harks on the topic of depleting natural resources and what can be learned from the past to improve sustainability. “If Walls Could Talk” therefore circles the past well with the present.
Despite my seemingly strong complaints, “If Walls Could Talk” is an interesting piece with supplemental photos and color plates which will aid history writers or those newer to the study of history. Although I didn’t feel I learned too much; the reading was enjoyable and I will read Worsley again. “If Walls Could Talk” isn’t terrible and is recommended; but is an average read, in my opinion.
February 21, 2012
Lucy Worsley opens the door and casts the reader in a medieval one room dwelling. She drags them through the centuries and drops in the court of Henry VIII (repeatedly) and later walks her audience through all the specialised rooms of a Victorian house. She airs the royal bed-sheets and empties the chamber pot (again, repeatedly).
In a word, she brings history alive.
All the things a modern man (or woman) might instinctively associate with medieval, Tudorian, or perhaps Victorian age, the author brings out into the light (sometimes candlelight other times gaslight) and explains in fascinating detail. Often she also compares what used to be to how things are now, and throughout the book she shows how and why things changed.
Worsley's personal touch adds humour and practicality to the mix, which strengthens the reading experience. But there are weaknesses too. Though it makes sense to conclude a book about the evolution of the British home in a chapter predicting what might follow it comes across slightly preachy and ominous. For someone intimately aware of why chamber pots persisted over the flush, she tries to achieve too much too soon.
Human minds and attitudes haven't altered that much. We'll still resist change, but looking back and seeing all the mistakes we've learned from can only help.
This book is a must read for everyone interested in history. That is unless you prefer to scour through the source material of historical essays, studies, memoirs, and interviews yourself. I know I wouldn't mind reading a few, but the whole bibliography?
A girl can dream.
I received an Advanced Readers Copy from the publisher through NetGalley.
In a word, she brings history alive.
All the things a modern man (or woman) might instinctively associate with medieval, Tudorian, or perhaps Victorian age, the author brings out into the light (sometimes candlelight other times gaslight) and explains in fascinating detail. Often she also compares what used to be to how things are now, and throughout the book she shows how and why things changed.
Worsley's personal touch adds humour and practicality to the mix, which strengthens the reading experience. But there are weaknesses too. Though it makes sense to conclude a book about the evolution of the British home in a chapter predicting what might follow it comes across slightly preachy and ominous. For someone intimately aware of why chamber pots persisted over the flush, she tries to achieve too much too soon.
Human minds and attitudes haven't altered that much. We'll still resist change, but looking back and seeing all the mistakes we've learned from can only help.
This book is a must read for everyone interested in history. That is unless you prefer to scour through the source material of historical essays, studies, memoirs, and interviews yourself. I know I wouldn't mind reading a few, but the whole bibliography?
A girl can dream.
I received an Advanced Readers Copy from the publisher through NetGalley.
February 24, 2016
I loved this book. Great piece of history in written form. Interesting, funny, and written with a cracking pace. I learnt a lot, even though I know this type of history quite well. I love Lucy's style. It's like I'm sitting having a chat with her.
It took me a while to finish it because I've been reading novels at the same time. But I could have devoured this much faster if I had wanted too. Instead I savoured it.
I shall now read her other book "The courtiers"
** Having glanced down the list of reviews from other readers I'm shocked at how many are bemoaning the lack of annotations and footnotes. If you want a dry book on domestic history, this isn't for you. If you want a fun look at the history of our homes and you like Lucy on TV then this is for you.
Don't belittle the book because it doesn't follow convention. All the details you want are there at the back of the book. Leaving them off the pages in mid sentence means the work flows. I much prefer it.
It took me a while to finish it because I've been reading novels at the same time. But I could have devoured this much faster if I had wanted too. Instead I savoured it.
I shall now read her other book "The courtiers"
** Having glanced down the list of reviews from other readers I'm shocked at how many are bemoaning the lack of annotations and footnotes. If you want a dry book on domestic history, this isn't for you. If you want a fun look at the history of our homes and you like Lucy on TV then this is for you.
Don't belittle the book because it doesn't follow convention. All the details you want are there at the back of the book. Leaving them off the pages in mid sentence means the work flows. I much prefer it.
September 13, 2016
Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful-William Morris
If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home is written in a very readable tone, and covers the four main areas of the house: the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room and the kitchen, from medieval times to the present day. While most of the books I review are Christian, this one is not, and those with delicate sensibilities might be advised to avoid it.
As ‘An Intimate History of the Home’, If Walls Could Talk is filled with fascinating, useful, useless and sometimes just plain revolting information about the homes and lives of our British ancestors (with some information on the Americans). Some of the information (like the discussion on childbirth) I Really Did Not Need To Know. At the same time, it makes me wonder what modern cultural or medical beliefs we hold will be mocked or looked upon with horror by future generations.
For example, have you ever said it is time to hit the hay or hit the sack? Worsley reminds us that this saying derives from a time when most beds were a sack stuffed with hay (at the rich end of the spectrum, Henry VIII apparently slept on eight feather mattresses which travelled with him).
There was also some gentle mocking of some of our modern standards, such as our “strange desirability of imperfection”, our belief in the superiority of hand-made products, even through they have “a certain margin of crudeness. The margin must never be so wide as to show bungling workmanship, since that would be evidence of low cost, nor so narrow as to suggest the ideal precision attained only by the machine, for that would be evidence of low cost.”
The author has undertaken extensive research, and If Walls Could Talk has over 40 period illustrations, a comprehensive list of references and a detailed index. Much of the information is from the author’s first-hand experience, gained working at Historic Royal Palaces (who manage properties such as Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London), and through presenting a BBC TV series on the history of the home.
Overall, If Walls Could Talk is a fascinating history of home and hearth that reminds me to be grateful for modern conveniences - many of which are more modern that I realised. Recommended for those who are addicted to shows such as Downton Abbey, Time Team and Antiques Roadshow.
Thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
This review also appears on my blog, www.christianreads.blogspot.com.
If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home is written in a very readable tone, and covers the four main areas of the house: the bedroom, the bathroom, the living room and the kitchen, from medieval times to the present day. While most of the books I review are Christian, this one is not, and those with delicate sensibilities might be advised to avoid it.
As ‘An Intimate History of the Home’, If Walls Could Talk is filled with fascinating, useful, useless and sometimes just plain revolting information about the homes and lives of our British ancestors (with some information on the Americans). Some of the information (like the discussion on childbirth) I Really Did Not Need To Know. At the same time, it makes me wonder what modern cultural or medical beliefs we hold will be mocked or looked upon with horror by future generations.
For example, have you ever said it is time to hit the hay or hit the sack? Worsley reminds us that this saying derives from a time when most beds were a sack stuffed with hay (at the rich end of the spectrum, Henry VIII apparently slept on eight feather mattresses which travelled with him).
There was also some gentle mocking of some of our modern standards, such as our “strange desirability of imperfection”, our belief in the superiority of hand-made products, even through they have “a certain margin of crudeness. The margin must never be so wide as to show bungling workmanship, since that would be evidence of low cost, nor so narrow as to suggest the ideal precision attained only by the machine, for that would be evidence of low cost.”
The author has undertaken extensive research, and If Walls Could Talk has over 40 period illustrations, a comprehensive list of references and a detailed index. Much of the information is from the author’s first-hand experience, gained working at Historic Royal Palaces (who manage properties such as Hampton Court Palace and the Tower of London), and through presenting a BBC TV series on the history of the home.
Overall, If Walls Could Talk is a fascinating history of home and hearth that reminds me to be grateful for modern conveniences - many of which are more modern that I realised. Recommended for those who are addicted to shows such as Downton Abbey, Time Team and Antiques Roadshow.
Thanks to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review.
This review also appears on my blog, www.christianreads.blogspot.com.
July 29, 2013
What there was of it was terribly interesting, there just wasn't enough of it. There were also precious few citations and no footnotes. Each chapter was much too short, and only just scratched the surface. To suit me, each chapter should have been a book of its own.
Also, I expected An Intimate History of the Home to be a history reaching back further in time, and ranging over more of the world. This should have been titled An Intimate History of the Home in Britain from the Normans On, With Special Attention Paid to the Tudor Court.
Worth picking up, but do align your expectations properly beforehand.
Also, I expected An Intimate History of the Home to be a history reaching back further in time, and ranging over more of the world. This should have been titled An Intimate History of the Home in Britain from the Normans On, With Special Attention Paid to the Tudor Court.
Worth picking up, but do align your expectations properly beforehand.
January 8, 2018
This book is a companion to a BBC series presented by Lucy Worsley. The book is divided like the show into sections: bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. I found the first section on the bedroom most interesting. I had no idea that the President/Prime Minister's Cabinet was named after a literal cabinet (closet) and am ashamed to say I never caught on to the fact British homes don't have closets the way our do in the U.S. Some of the information presented in the bedroom section is graphic and not family friendly but most of the rest of the book contains interesting facts one might want to share with younger people.
This is very much a popular history. Lucy Worsley drew on the research of others and the BBC team who conducted research for the show. This is the greatest flaw in the book as far as I can tell, as an academic historian. I did really enjoy the primary source quotes but a lot of the information is summarized and entire periods of time left out. My big frustration is that the late Georgian/Regency period wasn't really covered as much as the Medieval, Tudor and Victorian periods.
My other greatest problem with this book was when she tossed in random references to America. She referred to "Salem, New England" which is really odd. Why not Salem, Massachusetts in New England or Salem, Massachusetts, New England? She quoted Puritans without understanding the context. How Puritans viewed the world was vastly different to how the average Englishman viewed the word at the same time. She did understand marriage was a civil contract and divorces were allowed but didn't really explain the context. She should have stuck to Britain.
I would recommend this book for those who enjoyed the TV series and want a more in-depth look. For my own personal interests, I prefer Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. Lucy Worsley even used the book for her research and talked to Amanda Vickery.
This is very much a popular history. Lucy Worsley drew on the research of others and the BBC team who conducted research for the show. This is the greatest flaw in the book as far as I can tell, as an academic historian. I did really enjoy the primary source quotes but a lot of the information is summarized and entire periods of time left out. My big frustration is that the late Georgian/Regency period wasn't really covered as much as the Medieval, Tudor and Victorian periods.
My other greatest problem with this book was when she tossed in random references to America. She referred to "Salem, New England" which is really odd. Why not Salem, Massachusetts in New England or Salem, Massachusetts, New England? She quoted Puritans without understanding the context. How Puritans viewed the world was vastly different to how the average Englishman viewed the word at the same time. She did understand marriage was a civil contract and divorces were allowed but didn't really explain the context. She should have stuck to Britain.
I would recommend this book for those who enjoyed the TV series and want a more in-depth look. For my own personal interests, I prefer Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. Lucy Worsley even used the book for her research and talked to Amanda Vickery.
April 12, 2024
Lucy Worsley has a job I covet, being Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces, and if you're an English history buff, you've read some of her other books or seen her documentaries on television. I love how she will often try things herself and always laces in humor. This book, reminiscent of Bill Bryson's AT HOME: A SHORT HISTORY OF PRIVATE LIFE, is no exception. Worsley takes us room by room, from the Middle Ages to about 2010, and I also learned some interesting differences between British and American homes (e.g., wardrobes vs. closets) and a few details I can use in writing historical fiction.
An easy, worthwhile read.
An easy, worthwhile read.
March 16, 2016
Strange to have left this unfinished for so long whilst knowing how likeable it is. It's a guilty-pleasure history book: full of fascinating factoids and inferences about every day human behaviour in the past - the kind of thing that could inspire a teenager to do a history degree; however, if gathering evidence for an essay, you'd need volumes like those in the bibliography, as there are no footnotes, and this is obviously just popular narrative history to be devoured like a story.
Last year I started the book again and got so incensed by the Goodreads reviews from Americans who wanted special contextual footnotes or re-writing just to explain British things them, that I had to put the book away. We - and the rest of the world - are bombarded with American books all the time and we're expected to work out references to Peeps and brownstones and baseball arcana. How come they can't manage it the other way round? Also, I bet they haven't seen the TV series because Lucy Worsley is lovely, and how can you criticise her?
In the meantime, I trained myself to read fewer community reviews. This has been a good thing.
I'd love to say the book is practically perfect, but there is the odd error, or example of out of date research. For instance, it was known by 2011, at least in some quarters, that the 'rushes' on the floors of medieval halls were woven rush mats, not just a lot of loose stalks scattered. Also, there are a few things - details of modern every day life, like those that bothered the American reviewers - which look like personal perceptions: I don't think galingal, hake or whiting are particularly obscure (I was too- frequently served the two latter as a kid), and I'm of a similar background and age to the author. I really liked the moments of authorial intrusion, details about her life and flat, because I'm a fan, and anyway those make a lot of sense in a TV tie-in book - but they may not be so welcome for those who are unfamiliar with a writer. It would have been nice to see proportionally less, on royal households, and - whilst there is some - more on the middling sorts and lower orders; but this can't really be helped given the surviving evidence and typical audience interest. My preference would have been to exclude the material on America and include mainland Europe instead, but no doubt the publishers had an eye on likely markets. (Who will only say irritating things on the internet about their product anyway.)
The assertions that disgust and shame were 'new' emotions, which became prevalent in Britain only in the early modern period, make me want to do research. In psychology these are considered core emotions common to all cultures; however it would be far from the first time that psychologists had asserted that a contemporary norm was an absolute. I've no idea who's right without digging around in a lot of textbooks and journals.
I was surprised how much I learned, nonetheless. I figured because I'd known for years about things like the ancient pattern of humans probably having two sleeps on long winter nights, that everything else would be cosily familiar.
I didn't used to know that the term 'cloakroom' was used for loos because an ammonia-rich environment was a good place to hang your medieval robes so as to discourage pests. Or there are things I should have deduced, maybe once did but had forgotten - e.g. that it might have been preferable to be a medieval servant rather than a peasant because you'd have access to better food. It would be possible to write down a couple of dozen such factoids. (Maybe I'll add a couple more later.) And a small personal mystery has been solved; most of my life I thought 'quilt' and 'duvet' might be class-marked words for the same item, Mitford style, although no-one else had ever said so. I secretly resented having to say 'duvet' more and more often so people knew what I was talking about. Given what this book says, my word preference probably just means my family were early adopters of the things known in the 70s as 'continental quilts', whilst the word 'duvet' became popular a little later, never feeling like the 'right' or original term to me.
The reflections of the remarkable number of ways in which tastes and opinions have revolved over the past 1000 years were nice to have, and I was surprised to see future projections so much in line with my own casual thinking on how environmental issues, the end of oil and the increasing ineffectiveness of antibiotics might change homes, in some way perhaps becoming more like the past. I was instinctively comfortable with these sections, whilst also thinking I'd have framed them a little more conditionally and cautiously if writing them down, and added supporting evidence. But then, like the narrative of a contemporary TV documentary, the publishers clearly weren't aiming for an academic presentation.
This has always been a nice book to browse - odd chapters throughout the book were entirely familiar when reading it from cover to cover these last few days - but it was great to read the whole thing finally. It may not have quite all Worsley's exuberant presence that a TV series has, but to make up for it there's more information.
Last year I started the book again and got so incensed by the Goodreads reviews from Americans who wanted special contextual footnotes or re-writing just to explain British things them, that I had to put the book away. We - and the rest of the world - are bombarded with American books all the time and we're expected to work out references to Peeps and brownstones and baseball arcana. How come they can't manage it the other way round? Also, I bet they haven't seen the TV series because Lucy Worsley is lovely, and how can you criticise her?
In the meantime, I trained myself to read fewer community reviews. This has been a good thing.
I'd love to say the book is practically perfect, but there is the odd error, or example of out of date research. For instance, it was known by 2011, at least in some quarters, that the 'rushes' on the floors of medieval halls were woven rush mats, not just a lot of loose stalks scattered. Also, there are a few things - details of modern every day life, like those that bothered the American reviewers - which look like personal perceptions: I don't think galingal, hake or whiting are particularly obscure (I was too- frequently served the two latter as a kid), and I'm of a similar background and age to the author. I really liked the moments of authorial intrusion, details about her life and flat, because I'm a fan, and anyway those make a lot of sense in a TV tie-in book - but they may not be so welcome for those who are unfamiliar with a writer. It would have been nice to see proportionally less, on royal households, and - whilst there is some - more on the middling sorts and lower orders; but this can't really be helped given the surviving evidence and typical audience interest. My preference would have been to exclude the material on America and include mainland Europe instead, but no doubt the publishers had an eye on likely markets. (Who will only say irritating things on the internet about their product anyway.)
The assertions that disgust and shame were 'new' emotions, which became prevalent in Britain only in the early modern period, make me want to do research. In psychology these are considered core emotions common to all cultures; however it would be far from the first time that psychologists had asserted that a contemporary norm was an absolute. I've no idea who's right without digging around in a lot of textbooks and journals.
I was surprised how much I learned, nonetheless. I figured because I'd known for years about things like the ancient pattern of humans probably having two sleeps on long winter nights, that everything else would be cosily familiar.
I didn't used to know that the term 'cloakroom' was used for loos because an ammonia-rich environment was a good place to hang your medieval robes so as to discourage pests. Or there are things I should have deduced, maybe once did but had forgotten - e.g. that it might have been preferable to be a medieval servant rather than a peasant because you'd have access to better food. It would be possible to write down a couple of dozen such factoids. (Maybe I'll add a couple more later.) And a small personal mystery has been solved; most of my life I thought 'quilt' and 'duvet' might be class-marked words for the same item, Mitford style, although no-one else had ever said so. I secretly resented having to say 'duvet' more and more often so people knew what I was talking about. Given what this book says, my word preference probably just means my family were early adopters of the things known in the 70s as 'continental quilts', whilst the word 'duvet' became popular a little later, never feeling like the 'right' or original term to me.
The reflections of the remarkable number of ways in which tastes and opinions have revolved over the past 1000 years were nice to have, and I was surprised to see future projections so much in line with my own casual thinking on how environmental issues, the end of oil and the increasing ineffectiveness of antibiotics might change homes, in some way perhaps becoming more like the past. I was instinctively comfortable with these sections, whilst also thinking I'd have framed them a little more conditionally and cautiously if writing them down, and added supporting evidence. But then, like the narrative of a contemporary TV documentary, the publishers clearly weren't aiming for an academic presentation.
This has always been a nice book to browse - odd chapters throughout the book were entirely familiar when reading it from cover to cover these last few days - but it was great to read the whole thing finally. It may not have quite all Worsley's exuberant presence that a TV series has, but to make up for it there's more information.
June 14, 2020
Very enjoyable look through the history of the home and social history.
July 30, 2012
This is one of two simultaneous difficult reads, and this is the one that's not worth the effort. Which is very disappointing as it was highly recommended and my interests in design and history were practically lapping at the metaphoric nectar this book was supposed to serve up.
I haven't seen the series hosted by the author, Dr. Lucy Worsley - who has one of the world's dream jobs as chief curator at the not-for-profit caretaker charity Historic Royal Palaces - and perhaps her flighty, tip of the waves approach works with strong visuals. But there is a lack of solidity in her approach here, and the graphics aren't sufficient to overcome this.
Moreover, perhaps naively, I expected a lively discussion of the elements of a home, underscored by human interest anecdotes. Instead it's a litany of not very well-told anecdotes (some kind of prurient, and I did actively enjoy the Sixties and Seventies so it's not a church-lady squeamishness on my part.) These are occasionally legitimized by home facts.
Maybe I've got some left-over schoolishness to my expectations when an author dumps a quote into a text - I'd like to know the source, thank you very much. I'd also like an index that references things like "Rose Kitchen", when that's pictured; but no, if you don't know that it's a "fitted kitchen" and that's why it's in the book, you will not find it in the index as you search for its entry.
In a nutshell, this is a lightweight, not terribly well organized or elegantly-written exercise in not very much that's useful or enlightening.
I haven't seen the series hosted by the author, Dr. Lucy Worsley - who has one of the world's dream jobs as chief curator at the not-for-profit caretaker charity Historic Royal Palaces - and perhaps her flighty, tip of the waves approach works with strong visuals. But there is a lack of solidity in her approach here, and the graphics aren't sufficient to overcome this.
Moreover, perhaps naively, I expected a lively discussion of the elements of a home, underscored by human interest anecdotes. Instead it's a litany of not very well-told anecdotes (some kind of prurient, and I did actively enjoy the Sixties and Seventies so it's not a church-lady squeamishness on my part.) These are occasionally legitimized by home facts.
Maybe I've got some left-over schoolishness to my expectations when an author dumps a quote into a text - I'd like to know the source, thank you very much. I'd also like an index that references things like "Rose Kitchen", when that's pictured; but no, if you don't know that it's a "fitted kitchen" and that's why it's in the book, you will not find it in the index as you search for its entry.
In a nutshell, this is a lightweight, not terribly well organized or elegantly-written exercise in not very much that's useful or enlightening.
January 29, 2022
If Walls Could Talk is as entertaining as it can be, depending on your personal preference and what you specifically find interesting. For a person who loves learning about the history and development of the home, this book cannot easily be faulted. However, some aspects were not as interesting as others for me, so it took me a little longer to get through. This also may just be my opinion, but I think Lucy Worsley is far more entertaining on the screen than she is on paper. I do appreciate her wit when writing, though.
September 28, 2012
Worsley has collected a large set of amusing anecdotes, mixed it with easily digested history, and presented it as "the history of the home." It's charming, if flighty. If you already know much English history, few things will surprise you--but if you don't, I'm sure you'll find this fascinating and useful for countless ice-breaking dinner conversations.
November 21, 2021
A charming, light historical review of domestic life. This book is full of fun anecdotes and tidbits but can be inconsistent and a little scattered.
Here follows some unnecessarily nitpicky criticisms of what irked me while reading this book:
First of all, the interior headers are set in what looks to be Gill Sans. But... why? Why?
The book has a few other strange formatting choices, including the fact that while the color plates are referred to by number, they are not numbered on the inserted plates. Which means when you flip to the center you have to play a guessing game or sit there and count to figure out which image is being referred to.
Then there is the lack of footnotes (?!) which makes further exploration of her research, quotations, or oversimplified statements impossible. For example, something will be referenced broadly as coming from a “X-century text”; good luck figuring out what specific text she is talking about in that Bibliography.
This becomes especially relevant when she makes occasionally weirdly subjective asides, such as this strangely chatty warning at the end of a section on venereal disease: “But be warned: the numbers of new cases [of syphilis] being reported today are on the rise!” Yes, I suppose, but we were just talking about Georgian England, so who/what/ when/where are we talking about now, when did this become a PSA, and can we see a citation of that statistic please, because it just sounds like you threw that in after hearing it on the morning news?
Most of these jarring additions come at the very end of her chapters, when she often feels the need to tie things back to the present time for some reason. On sanitary napkins: “The ecological option in terms of sanitary protection is much clearer: rubber devices like the Mooncup are completely reusable and produce no waste at all. And yet we hear very little about this very simple green step that went many women could make. The taboo placed by Leviticus still holds its sway.” Or: “And so each small household today sees to its own vacuuming or laundry or rat-catching, and men and women argue constantly about whose gender bears the heaviest burden.” Okay then! These are very loaded and subjective ways to end an otherwise straight-forward discussion of historical life.
Another example: she twice labels some food choices of the peasantry as “nasty” and insists medieval eaters inadvertently followed a “macrobiotic diet” (citation please?), which is later contradicted by a more detailed explanation of their eating habits.
Lastly, it would help to at least once frame the book as coming from a thoroughly British perspective, as this becomes obvious almost immediately but is never clearly acknowledged. The author just assumes references to the queen are to be expected and occasionally gestures vaguely to other regions of the world, such as noting that others "in the East" (here I imagine an ambiguous wave of the hand to encompass 'somewhere over there') use a hose in place of toilet paper.
Doing without these little editorial asides would have helped the more valuable researched material maintain a bit more of its credibility.
Notes
In their bedroom mirrors ladies either cursed or blessed the biological background that gave them figures that either met or failed the approved fashion of their times. Sometimes the breasts were valued; sometimes not: the pendulum swung regularly from side-to-side. (PG. 45)
A Georgian prostitute in prints and cartoons — and presumably in real life too — indicates her availability by lifting up one side of her skirt and showing her ankle. (PG. 47)
Some thieves specialized in stealing these particular items: ‘My chief dexterity was in robbing the ladies. There is a peculiar delicacy required in whipping one’s hand up a a lady’s petticoats and carrying off her pockets,’ posted one (fictional) pickpocket. Putting an intrusive hand into a lady’s pocket was often used as a metaphor for seduction. (PG. 49)
The historian Amanda Vickery notes that in Jane Austin's novels, a female character shown around a single man's house is practically being given permission to assume that a proposal is forthcoming. (PG. 183)
This craze to possess had in fact started long before the nineteenth century. The late-seventeenth-century invention of shops and shopping by an urban middle class who lived by trade was mirrored by the growth of a new type of domestic space. What might be termed the ‘middle-class’ living room was full of superfluous objects, chosen for ornament rather than use yet cheap and not truly beautiful: a barricade of possessions intended to stabilize a precarious position in the world. (PG. 185-186)
The literary scholar Julia Prewitt Brown argues that the first ever of these ‘bourgeois interiors’ (the crowded and slightly shoddy living rooms of the socially insecure) to be created in literature was situated on a desert island. In Daniel Defoe's novel of 1719, the adventurer Robinson Crusoe was taught by his father to aspire to belong to the ‘middle state’ of society, and he was taught that honest industry would lead to a life of well earned ease. After his shipwreck Caruso is trapped on his desert island. Being a good member of the ‘middling sort’, he devotes himself to the archetypal he Bourgeois past time inventorying and protecting the stores and tools salvaged from the sea. He fortifies a cave to protect his possessions from ravenous beasts, and is rarely to be seen outside it without his umbrella and his gun.
Robinson Crusoe was followed by a horde of successors: everyone can recognize the overcluttered, stuffy, uptight living room of a truly anxious status-conscious person with neither of the ease of aristocrat at riches nor the genuine restrictions of poverty. This phenomenon reached its apogee in an imaginary Victorian living room forever damned by Henry James and smothered in
“… trumpery ornament and scrapbook art, with strange excrescences and a bunch of draperies, with gimcracks that might have been keepsakes for maid-servants… they have gone wildly astray over carpets and curtain; they had and infallible instinct for disaster." (PG. 187)
The modern houses of the 1930s we're supposed to be pared-down, simplified machines for living: “the home is no longer permanent from generation to generation; family ties, inconsistent with freedom of living, are broken. We demand spaciousness, release from encumbrances, from furniture and trappings that overload our rooms, possessions that tie us and tools that are obsolete.” (PG. 189)
One of the great distresses of the English Civil War and the associated social upheaval of the 17th century was the felling of forests that had been carefully managed over centuries. (PG. 192)
The twenty minutes for which each rush light burned became a familiar unit of time. Neighbors often pooled their resources, taking turns to gather in each others houses for night-time sewing and mending by the eked-out glimmer. Rushes were such a cheap and reliable way of providing light that they were found in the poorest homes right into the twentieth century. (PG. 193)
Of course, in an age of candle and fire light accidents were common. The London wood-turner Nehemiah Wallington had several lucky escapes from being burned to death, a fate not uncommon in his crowded parish… Once, Wallington’s servant, Obadiah, strictly contrary to instructions, had taken a candle up to his bedchamber. There it fell over and burnt ‘half a yard of the sheet and the flock bed’. But the quick thinking Obadiah woke up a fellow servant, and ‘both of them start up and pissed out the fire as well as they could’. (PG. 195)
In fact, ladies court dress woven with heavy silver thread had the effect of making its way were gleam in candlelight. (PG. 196)
Francis Willoughby's seventeenth century book of games is full of bright ideas for cheaper parties, describing the rules of backgammon and ‘ticktac’ and giving instructions for playing cards…
As well as creating a lot of labor, the open fire lead to a whole lost slice of life: the art of amusing yourself while warming yourself in low light levels. (PG. 226)
The mingling of different ranks in an informal manner became more common as the eighteenth century passed. Sitting upon chairs arranged in a perfect oval for a measured discussion, a formation central to the drawing rooms of the baroque age, fell out a fashion. ‘All the ladies sitting in a formal circle is universally the most obnoxious to conversation,’ claimed a character in a novel of 1817, ‘here I am like a bird in a circle of chalk that deer not move as much as its head or its eyes.’
So great became the drawing room’s emphasis on sociability there by the nineteenth century some visitors were bored almost senseless by the long, relentlessly chatty days common to nineteenth century house parties. ‘This day we have been all sitting together in the drawing room going on with our various little employment,’ wrote Maria Edgeworth in 1819. These entertainments included making puppets, copying pictures and sorting ribbons, but there was the frustrated ‘Fanny in the library by her recluse philosophical self for some time — then joining the vulgar herd in the drawing room’. Likewise, Prince Puckler-Muskua, who visited England between 1826 and 1828, found that he couldn't even go to his own room to write a letter because it was ‘not usual, and therefore surprises and annoys people’. (PG. 227)
To marry was everyone's duty, except for the aged: ‘of all the passions the old man should avoid a foolish passion for women,’ wrote Dr. Hill in The Old Man’s Guide to Health and Longer Life (1764). (PG. 232)
Here follows some unnecessarily nitpicky criticisms of what irked me while reading this book:
First of all, the interior headers are set in what looks to be Gill Sans. But... why? Why?
The book has a few other strange formatting choices, including the fact that while the color plates are referred to by number, they are not numbered on the inserted plates. Which means when you flip to the center you have to play a guessing game or sit there and count to figure out which image is being referred to.
Then there is the lack of footnotes (?!) which makes further exploration of her research, quotations, or oversimplified statements impossible. For example, something will be referenced broadly as coming from a “X-century text”; good luck figuring out what specific text she is talking about in that Bibliography.
This becomes especially relevant when she makes occasionally weirdly subjective asides, such as this strangely chatty warning at the end of a section on venereal disease: “But be warned: the numbers of new cases [of syphilis] being reported today are on the rise!” Yes, I suppose, but we were just talking about Georgian England, so who/what/ when/where are we talking about now, when did this become a PSA, and can we see a citation of that statistic please, because it just sounds like you threw that in after hearing it on the morning news?
Most of these jarring additions come at the very end of her chapters, when she often feels the need to tie things back to the present time for some reason. On sanitary napkins: “The ecological option in terms of sanitary protection is much clearer: rubber devices like the Mooncup are completely reusable and produce no waste at all. And yet we hear very little about this very simple green step that went many women could make. The taboo placed by Leviticus still holds its sway.” Or: “And so each small household today sees to its own vacuuming or laundry or rat-catching, and men and women argue constantly about whose gender bears the heaviest burden.” Okay then! These are very loaded and subjective ways to end an otherwise straight-forward discussion of historical life.
Another example: she twice labels some food choices of the peasantry as “nasty” and insists medieval eaters inadvertently followed a “macrobiotic diet” (citation please?), which is later contradicted by a more detailed explanation of their eating habits.
Lastly, it would help to at least once frame the book as coming from a thoroughly British perspective, as this becomes obvious almost immediately but is never clearly acknowledged. The author just assumes references to the queen are to be expected and occasionally gestures vaguely to other regions of the world, such as noting that others "in the East" (here I imagine an ambiguous wave of the hand to encompass 'somewhere over there') use a hose in place of toilet paper.
Doing without these little editorial asides would have helped the more valuable researched material maintain a bit more of its credibility.
Notes
In their bedroom mirrors ladies either cursed or blessed the biological background that gave them figures that either met or failed the approved fashion of their times. Sometimes the breasts were valued; sometimes not: the pendulum swung regularly from side-to-side. (PG. 45)
A Georgian prostitute in prints and cartoons — and presumably in real life too — indicates her availability by lifting up one side of her skirt and showing her ankle. (PG. 47)
Some thieves specialized in stealing these particular items: ‘My chief dexterity was in robbing the ladies. There is a peculiar delicacy required in whipping one’s hand up a a lady’s petticoats and carrying off her pockets,’ posted one (fictional) pickpocket. Putting an intrusive hand into a lady’s pocket was often used as a metaphor for seduction. (PG. 49)
The historian Amanda Vickery notes that in Jane Austin's novels, a female character shown around a single man's house is practically being given permission to assume that a proposal is forthcoming. (PG. 183)
This craze to possess had in fact started long before the nineteenth century. The late-seventeenth-century invention of shops and shopping by an urban middle class who lived by trade was mirrored by the growth of a new type of domestic space. What might be termed the ‘middle-class’ living room was full of superfluous objects, chosen for ornament rather than use yet cheap and not truly beautiful: a barricade of possessions intended to stabilize a precarious position in the world. (PG. 185-186)
The literary scholar Julia Prewitt Brown argues that the first ever of these ‘bourgeois interiors’ (the crowded and slightly shoddy living rooms of the socially insecure) to be created in literature was situated on a desert island. In Daniel Defoe's novel of 1719, the adventurer Robinson Crusoe was taught by his father to aspire to belong to the ‘middle state’ of society, and he was taught that honest industry would lead to a life of well earned ease. After his shipwreck Caruso is trapped on his desert island. Being a good member of the ‘middling sort’, he devotes himself to the archetypal he Bourgeois past time inventorying and protecting the stores and tools salvaged from the sea. He fortifies a cave to protect his possessions from ravenous beasts, and is rarely to be seen outside it without his umbrella and his gun.
Robinson Crusoe was followed by a horde of successors: everyone can recognize the overcluttered, stuffy, uptight living room of a truly anxious status-conscious person with neither of the ease of aristocrat at riches nor the genuine restrictions of poverty. This phenomenon reached its apogee in an imaginary Victorian living room forever damned by Henry James and smothered in
“… trumpery ornament and scrapbook art, with strange excrescences and a bunch of draperies, with gimcracks that might have been keepsakes for maid-servants… they have gone wildly astray over carpets and curtain; they had and infallible instinct for disaster." (PG. 187)
The modern houses of the 1930s we're supposed to be pared-down, simplified machines for living: “the home is no longer permanent from generation to generation; family ties, inconsistent with freedom of living, are broken. We demand spaciousness, release from encumbrances, from furniture and trappings that overload our rooms, possessions that tie us and tools that are obsolete.” (PG. 189)
One of the great distresses of the English Civil War and the associated social upheaval of the 17th century was the felling of forests that had been carefully managed over centuries. (PG. 192)
The twenty minutes for which each rush light burned became a familiar unit of time. Neighbors often pooled their resources, taking turns to gather in each others houses for night-time sewing and mending by the eked-out glimmer. Rushes were such a cheap and reliable way of providing light that they were found in the poorest homes right into the twentieth century. (PG. 193)
Of course, in an age of candle and fire light accidents were common. The London wood-turner Nehemiah Wallington had several lucky escapes from being burned to death, a fate not uncommon in his crowded parish… Once, Wallington’s servant, Obadiah, strictly contrary to instructions, had taken a candle up to his bedchamber. There it fell over and burnt ‘half a yard of the sheet and the flock bed’. But the quick thinking Obadiah woke up a fellow servant, and ‘both of them start up and pissed out the fire as well as they could’. (PG. 195)
In fact, ladies court dress woven with heavy silver thread had the effect of making its way were gleam in candlelight. (PG. 196)
Francis Willoughby's seventeenth century book of games is full of bright ideas for cheaper parties, describing the rules of backgammon and ‘ticktac’ and giving instructions for playing cards…
As well as creating a lot of labor, the open fire lead to a whole lost slice of life: the art of amusing yourself while warming yourself in low light levels. (PG. 226)
The mingling of different ranks in an informal manner became more common as the eighteenth century passed. Sitting upon chairs arranged in a perfect oval for a measured discussion, a formation central to the drawing rooms of the baroque age, fell out a fashion. ‘All the ladies sitting in a formal circle is universally the most obnoxious to conversation,’ claimed a character in a novel of 1817, ‘here I am like a bird in a circle of chalk that deer not move as much as its head or its eyes.’
So great became the drawing room’s emphasis on sociability there by the nineteenth century some visitors were bored almost senseless by the long, relentlessly chatty days common to nineteenth century house parties. ‘This day we have been all sitting together in the drawing room going on with our various little employment,’ wrote Maria Edgeworth in 1819. These entertainments included making puppets, copying pictures and sorting ribbons, but there was the frustrated ‘Fanny in the library by her recluse philosophical self for some time — then joining the vulgar herd in the drawing room’. Likewise, Prince Puckler-Muskua, who visited England between 1826 and 1828, found that he couldn't even go to his own room to write a letter because it was ‘not usual, and therefore surprises and annoys people’. (PG. 227)
To marry was everyone's duty, except for the aged: ‘of all the passions the old man should avoid a foolish passion for women,’ wrote Dr. Hill in The Old Man’s Guide to Health and Longer Life (1764). (PG. 232)
January 9, 2021
I loved this and am giving it 4 stars, rather than 5, because I wish there was more of it! Each subject covered is so interesting and I wish Worsley could have gone into a little more depth; however, I do appreciate that writing in more depth would warrant at least 20 books, rather than 1...
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