31 Days of Halloween – October 24

These are both fantastic and silly. British Pathé and pulled together 3 newsreels about haunted houses in England that aired in the 1950s and 60s. They also curate a fantastic YouTube channel and all this month they are featuring “The Things That Scare Us.” Be sure to check out some of the 90,000 clips they…

OF WEIRD NEWS AND STRANGE OBJECTS

Burglar Caught By A Skeleton By Jeremy Clay & Antiques Magpie by Marc Allum Jeremy Clay has scoured Victorian newspapers for tidbits and tales of bizarre and amazing news and compiled them into this handy book.  Need to impress someone at a party?  Need to one-up that guy at work?  Get some ideas here — or…

REVIEW: THE BURNING AIR by Erin Kelly

Erin Kelly’s third novel puts a modern twist on a classic archetype:  The English country house mystery.  This is a chilling psychological tale, told from a number increasingly unreliable narrators. The MacBride family is well-to-do and respectable.  The patriarch is a lauded schoolmaster in a prim and proper English town.  When the mother of the…

REVIEW: THE TOWER By Nigel Jones

Jones’ overview of the Tower of London’s thousand year history was no doubt a massive undertaking. Imagine it: ten centuries worth of sieges, celebrations, world-altering decisions, wrongful deaths and sovereign decrees all held within these walls, on just a few acres of land. Jones visits the (in)famous as well as the less well-known.  Henry VIII’s…