The Time Traveller's Guide To Elizabethan England

[poliphilo]

Ian Mortimer's Elizabethan England is all plague, famine, crime, cruelty, religious intolerance, misogyny and child abuse. I tumbled to what he was doing when he represented the however-many it-was compulsory saints days as something imposed on a groaning populace by the lordly church without mentioning that they also served as jolly holidays.  If you cherry-pick your facts and relentlessly accentuate the negative you can make any society seem hellish-  and that includes our own (God save you) even though we do possess the flush toilets and electric lights the Elizabethans suffered without.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the books are as dour and grim as the TV programme?