The SS Great Britain is now a museum. It’s also fully accessible for the disabled.

For those of you who don’t know about the SS Great Britain, here is a short history:

<object width=”480″ height=”385″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/_NFjnq5Pde0&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?rel=0″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/_NFjnq5Pde0&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1?rel=0″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”480″ height=”385″></embed></object>

Of course, for someone like me, who writes Victorian fiction, it was always  going to be a winner. But this exhibition is very special, not only because it  has so many exquisite items on display, but because all of the items were  purchased by Victoria and Albert as gifts. It is in essence a display of their  love for each other.

It was also fantastic to see so many Victorian items on display: paintings,  sculpture, jewellery, a dress, porcelain, caskets, jugs, a piano, an ivory  throne, interior designs, furniture and photographs.

The royal couple would have an   annual budget of £2,000 to spend   on art. Of course, 150 years ago  that was rather a lot of money. However, they didn’t always get to buy everything they wanted - some items of art could be priced as high as £9,000. They would give each other gifts of art often as a surprise in order to delight the other, and there was often sentimental items based around their children.

What was most interesting was that not only were the couple art buyers, they were also artists themselves and some of the items on display were their own design or work including music compositions, ornaments and paintings. The couple were also credited with helping making early photography popular, as they very much enjoyed this form of art.

If you can get to London, this exhibition is well worth a visit. The staff at the museum are really helpful and nice too ;0)

Jenna

x

For those of us who love Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, we cannot but help feel sorry for poor Mrs Bennett when she moans she only has daughters and no son to inherit her husbands estate. So, she has to put up with Mr Collins turning her out of her home as soon as Mr Bennett dies.

But five daughter’s and no son’s? Surely Jane Austen was using poetic licence with that?

Well it seems not, because today I met a lady who has four daughters and quite literally can’t have son’s.

The reason is that she has inherited a genetic disorder which means her body rejects male foetus’s.

Sadly, it also means she has had numerous miscarriages, and they were all boys. The only pregnancies which went full term were girls.

Apparently there is also a similar genetic disorder where only boys are born…

Let’s hope if this was the case for Mrs Bennett that Elizabeth wasn’t afflicted with this, and the Bennett sisters were just all girls by coincidence.

Jenna Dawlish

I blinked and I missed it. Brunel’s tunnel under the Thames was open for a couple of days and I only just found out - after the event.

What’s so good about a tunnel? Well, not much except this one was built by Marc Brunel and his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel and was hailed at the time the 8th wonder of the world.

Marc Brunel was also an Engineer and he started the tunnel but became too ill to finish it. So his son took over - still very young.

I could go on about it more, but the Daily Mail has done a great article on it, so have a read how amazing these two men were:

Clickie Here

Jenna

x

On Tuesday 2nd March, I attended a lecture lunch at the National Trust Property Killerton in Devon.

Killerton houses a wonderful costume collection and they have swapped the   entire collection this year to display a collection of elegant dresses over the   last 200 years: 1770’s to 1970’s.

There is such a lot to the lecture, I’m going to do a number of posts about it    over the next week or so. The lecture was given by Shelley Tobin, the  curator of the museum for the last 17 year (so she really knows her stuff).

The exhibition opens next Wednesday at Killerton, and will run for about a   year. So why not try and get along? You won’t be disappointed with the    house, gardens and costume museum.

Coco Chanel and her influence on fashion.

Shelley Tobin started by explaining the influence of Coco Chanel on fashion in the 1950’s. Chanel turned on it’s head hundreds of years of fashion advice. Up until Chanel, women bought expensive jewellery and very impractical clothes if they wanted to look elegant, often with uncomfortable undergarments : stays and corsets etc. However, Chanel said:

“Everything about fashion must be practical…Jewellery must be fake.”

For thousands of wealthy women before her, the thought of wearing fake jewels would have made them have a turn.

Chanel’s other ethos was to try and get women to appear to “not age”. (Apparently she also said men hate women who cry!)

Chanel was the creator of the “Little Black Dress”. She said women of any age can wear it.

Sir Bernard and Lady Docker - the Posh and Becks of the 1950’s.

The Docker’s were photographed wherever they went. Lady Nora Docker was Bernard’s third wife and was a dancer before she married the multi-millionaire head of Daimler.

Lady Docker was a self-styled bottle blonde. She had 1950’s “bling” down to a T and always wore very OTT clothes (though apparently all her jewellery was real.) It was an insult at that time to be compared to Lady Docker.

She was also famous for creating a Daimer car with gold plate instead of chrome bumpers, and with Zebra skin seats (yes, real Zebra skin). She didn’t get the difference between elegant and vulgar, and is proof that wealth doesn’t always mean elegant.

Coming up next time: 1770’s elegance. ]]> http://www.jennadawlish.com/?feed=rss2&p=208 http://www.jennadawlish.com/?p=205 http://www.jennadawlish.com/?p=205#comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:24:09 +0000 jennadawlish http://www.jennadawlish.com/?p=205

Wynfield’s Kingdom is a brilliant novel which will draw you into the Victorian London underworld.

The story centres around Dr Grant, a disgraced surgeon who takes up residence in Bermondsey, Wynfield a young man adopted by Dr Grant and Wynfield’s girlfriend Diana. I don’t like giving plot details away, so I won’t tell you anymore about that.. There are so many levels to this novel, it could be re-read several times and you’d still discover more. The characters are rounded and though all fundamentally flawed and at times grotesque, you find yourself caring what happens to them but hating what they do to themselves and other people. The most interesting aspect of the book was the relationship between Wynfield and Diana. Both young, and drawn together they cross boundaries that they shouldn’t.They both love and hate each other. Dr Grant, the disgraced doctor is the thin thread that stops them both from falling into even more depravity. He is a surprisingly sedate character, yet interesting and who gives us a few surprises. There are many other secondary characters (like Kip for example) who pull together a facinting tale of Victorian London underworld. What is most astonishing, is that the author is not English.

The research is faultless, but you do not feel as though you are reading a factual book - very important to me when reading a historical novel. I really enjoyed reading this book, and would recommend it to anyone. It’s very much setting a new era of Victorian novels. One that draws away from the cliched Dickens and Sherlock Holmes and has a gritty reality I’ve not seen before and would like to see again. It would make a great film!

Here is the link: http://myeclecticreads.blogspot.com/2010/02/thoughts-on-love-engineered-by-jenna.html

I’m really pleased she liked it!

Click here to buy!

http://jdp-news.blogspot.com/2010/02/jenna-dawlish-author-interview-and.html

Thanks to Joyce for having me, and posing such great questions! I’m also giving a copy of Love Engineered away, so get on over there and enter!

Jenna

x