Daniel Gale/Shutterstock
The pavements in cities were just not a pleasant setting for a stroll.
A Tristram’s starling (Onychognathus tristramii) in flight over the Eilat mountains.
Ian Butler Photography/Alamy
H.B. Tristram was a Victorian clergyman and ornithologist who categorised a list of birds he’d found in Palestine.
Too Many Blackamoors by Heather Agyepong (2021).
Lakeside Arts
The exhibition celebrates and interrogates the cultural afterlives of Victorian Britain.
Phrenology images from Vaught’s Practical Character Reader (1902).
Public Domain Review
From pulling faces to reading the bumps on your head, these historic leisure activities could be handy for a rainy summer day.
Enough water is lost in the UK each day to fill around 1,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
AlanMorris/Shutterstock
Why the UK still loses 3 billion litres of water a day through leaks.
Andreas von Einsiedel/Alamy
More is more in #cluttercore, the new interior trend championed by the young maximalists of TikTok.
No baggy shirts and trousers with expanding waistbands, singer Rihanna has chosen form fitting clothing that exposes rather than hides her pregnancy.
Abaca Press/Alamy
The Victorians are to blame for our conservative ideas about how a pregnant body should look
Dinah Craik.
National Portrait Gallery
Marrying the husband of your deceased sister was legally considered incest, leaving women of all classes in ruinous circumstances.
GoodStudio/Shutterstock
‘Attention snacking’ may help keep us alert.
Granger Historical Picture Archive / Alamy
Despite arguments that young children have enjoyed Jane Eyre for 150 years, the Victorians were much more concerned about the novel’s influence than universities are today.
‘Captain Scott’s last Birthday Dinner’, Antarctica, June 6th 1911.
Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
In an era before clinical trials, medical writers drew on the stories of explorers as evidence about the health effects of different foods and drinks.
The expansion of railways meant more people could travel around the country for seaside getaways.
Gordon Samson/Alamy
Expanding railways and changes in labour practices meant that the Victorians had time for a proper holiday and many took to the British coast.
Olesia Reshetnikova/Shutterstock
The Christmas holidays can sometimes feel a little unhealthy but the ingredients that makeup a Christmas pudding are pretty nutritious.
OSTILL is Franck Camhi/Shutterstock.com
In Sherlock, domination is something to be revered, rather than challenged.
Host of popular true crime podcast Serial, American journalist Sarah Koenig.
Penn State/Flikr
Penny dreadfuls told real stories of murder and mayhem to 19th-century audiences seeking escape from city life. True crime podcasts have a lot in common with them.
Danny Lawson/PA Wire/PA Images
Environmental activists have been advocating for piecemeal legal change for decades. But a more fundamental rewrite of the law is needed.
Maksimilian/Shutterstock
These legends allow us to address our fears about the urban environment.
SCOTT BARBOUR/AAP
A survey conducted in April revealed more than half the participants flouted social distancing rules to go shopping for non-essential items, and visit friends or family.
Charles Dickens in his study at Gad’s Hill Place in Kent, where he died in 1870.
Charles Dickens Museum
PODCAST: An audio version of an in depth article on what newly discovered documents reveal about the burial of Charles Dickens, 150 years after his death.
Highgate Cemetery.
Pack-Shot/Shutterstock
Graveyards were important locations in Victorian life.