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Category / Nostalgia

In the Grand Scheme of Things

As you can imagine, I collect a lot of images from the internet. And sometimes, I need to unload them to clear some space on the old laptop. So this is me, doing that, in a meaningful way. I hope you’ll find the theme of today’s spring clean larger than life… Above: A security guard walking down US…

Sex Worker Brides & the Rise of “Millionaires” in the Twisted Tale of a Forgotten Economic Crash

Once upon a time, in pre-revolutionary Paris, French prisoners were set free under the condition that they married prostitutes and emigrated with them to Louisiana. The newlyweds were chained together, escorted to the port and sent to the land of the free. This bizarre and little-known anecdote of history comes from the story of one…

The Story behind “Keep Calm and Carry On”

It’s one of the most recognizable posters in the world, an internet meme reinvented thousands of times over and yet do any of us actually know the story behind it? This excellent little video schools us on the origins of the wartime poster and how it was actually lost in history until 2000 when it…

My Secret Paris Archive

I don’t like going to the Louvre. There, I said it. Let’s leave all those people to queue up for hours while we disappear to find a hidden Paris archive just a few streets away. We’re on the hunt for La Galcante, a clever little French wordplay on “galerie” and “brocante”. Tucked away in the…

Lovely Ladies in Lace at the Paris Races

I‘m just a little bit mesmerised by these photographs of Parisian ladies showing off their best French lace at the races. The Hippodrome de Lonchamps was the place to be seen in the 19th and early 20th century, a pre-Paris Fashion Week catwalk of sorts in the spring. The very latest modes were on parade, as modelled by these…

Don’t Mess With the Jiu-jitsu Suffragettes

It’s Edwardian Era Glasgow, circa 1914, and the stress mounting in St. Andrews’s Hall is unbearable. Flocks of Suffragettes and policemen are waiting for the woman of the hour, Emmeline Pankhurst, to magically surface and fight against her own arrest — the tension is so palpable, you could cut it with a knife. Or karate-chop…

The Soviet Communist Origins of International Women’s Day

I’ve been informed that the way we celebrate Women’s Day in western society is a little bit weak compared to the way they do it in Russia– which might have something to do with the fact that the Soviets basically invented the holiday. Long before the world had International Women’s Day, Soviet Russia had ‘Working Women’s Day’, where it was first declared a national…

Backstage at the Paris Opera House in 1937

Just when I think I’ve seen all the vintage photos there are to see of Paris, I get lucky and find a stack of treasure hiding away in the archives to share with you. So today, we’re using our virtual backstage pass to snoop around the iconic Palais Garnier. Classical ballet as we know it today…

The Women Warriors who served Wine on the Battlefield

Forgotten feminist icons of the French military, the Vivandières, alternatively known as cantinières, was the French title for women attached to military units who sold wine to the troops and offered better cuisine on the battlefield than the army could offer. An often overlooked part of women’s and military history, while they were not sanctioned to do any…

The First Man to Reach the North Pole was an African American Desk Clerk the World Forgot

“I think I’m the first man to sit on top of the world,” is not something many people can boast, especially if they lead perfectly normal lives, say, working a desk job in the city in relative anonymity. But for many years, that was the truth of Matthew Henson. In 1908, the unsung African American…

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