regshoe

I have been stuck inside for most of the day due to the highly interesting weather. I went out for a short walk this morning and got thoroughly soaked—it was great fun but definitely confirmed that staying in for the rest of the time was the right thing to do.

Anyway, I decided to pass the time by reading Shakespeare's Henry IV Part I. I find Shakespeare's language difficult enough that it'll probably take a few more read-throughs and/or watches of the play to appreciate it properly, but I like it already! It picks up shortly after Richard II left off, and follows the new King Henry IV as he finds himself on the other side of a rebellion against the crown (this time, I already knew a very little about the history in question because of that one Horrible Histories song about Owain Glyndŵr—who appears in the play). Despite the fairly similar setting and events, it's very different in style and mood from Richard II: it's a lot more down-to-earth, with more coarse humour and comedy hijinks, and quite a bit of it is in prose (Richard II is pretty much entirely verse, iirc). It was an interesting contrast, although I think Richard II will still be my fave. I continue to enjoy the way Shakespeare plays with words very much, and there's a lot of it here (and, I'm sure, much more that I missed this time around and will get to appreciate later!).

The rest of my reading over the last couple of weeks has been more historical stuff about the Jacobites, who I think are now a proper obsession in their own right. I started with some more general historical background by reading Eighteenth-Century Britain 1688-1783 by Jeremy Black, which was a very broad overview of the major features and events of the century. The general theme could be summarised as 'it was a complicated time; lots happened; many things changed in important ways, but a lot of things didn't really change'. So industrialisation was kicking off, but many areas had little or no large-scale industry and many people didn't work in industrial settings; transport and communication links improved with things like the turnpike roads, but were still often pretty terrible by modern standards, and so on. I preferred these chapters on society, and found the political stuff a bit difficult to follow, which isn't too surprising because it was very complicated. In any case, it was all very interesting! The author has also written a history of the '45, which I've just got from the library and am very much looking forward to.

Then I got back to the main point with Culloden: The Last Charge of the Highland Clans 1746 by John Sadler. The author is a military historian and there is a particular focus on the battle of Culloden, but despite the title the book as a whole is a general account of the history of the Jacobites, going all the way back to the first Stuart kings of Scotland as context for the later loyalty of the Highland clans. The events of the '45, particularly the battles, are discussed in some detail, which was all very interesting and relevant. The writing style is much more accessible than the other history books I've read so far—there's a lot of quite vivid detailed description of the events (occasionally a bit too vivid for my squeamishness), and lots of quotes from eyewitness accounts, which were very informative—although there were occasional awkwardnesses and minor errors in the sentence-level writing which could be a little distracting.

I'm not quite sure what I'll read next—I have more history books lined up, obviously, but I think I need a few days' break before getting back to them. Perhaps I'll just do a bit of (re-)reading all the great fairy tales in the once_upon_fic tagset...