How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain

Goodman, Ruth

ISBN 10: 1782438491 / ISBN 13: 9781782438496

Published by Michael O'Mara

About this Item

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # wbs7197428055

Bibliographic Details

Title: How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain

Publisher: Michael O'Mara

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis:

Historian and popular BBC TV presenter Ruth Goodman, author of How to Be a Tudor, offers up a history of Renaissance Britain - the offensive language, insulting gestures, insolent behaviour, brawling and scandal of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - with practical tips on just how to horrify the Tudor neighbours.

From royalty to peasantry, every age has its bad eggs, those who break all the rules and rub everyone up the wrong way. But their niggling, anti-social and irritating ways not only tell us about what upset people, but also what mattered to them, how their society functioned and what kind of world they lived in.

In this brilliantly nitty-gritty exploration of real life in the Tudor and Stuart age, you will discover:

- how to choose the perfect insult, whether it be draggletail, varlet, flap, saucy fellow, strumpet, ninny-hammer or stinkard
- why quoting Shakespeare was very poor form
- the politics behind men kissing each other on the lips
- why flashing the inside of your hat could repulse someone
- the best way to mock accents, preachers, soldiers and pretty much everything else besides

Ruth Goodman draws upon advice books and manuals, court cases and sermons, drama and imagery to outline bad behaviour from the gauche to the galling, the subtle to the outrageous. It is a celebration of drunkards, scolds, harridans and cross dressers in a time when calling a man a fool could get someone killed, and cursing wasn't just rude, it worked!

'Ruth is the queen of living history - long may she reign!'
Lucy Worsley

Review:

impeccable... [Goodman's] research is as comprehensive as the advice she metes out to those wishing to emulate the bad behaviour of their ancestors (Tracy Borman BBC History Magazine)

Entertaining (History Revealed Magazine)

This is a masterclass of bad behaviour... a lively romp through early modern British social history (Who Do You Think You Are Magazine)

I absolutely love this book. Exuberant, absorbing . . . there's scarcely a detail of Victorian life Ruth has not tried. (A. N. Wilson on 'How to be a Victorian' Mail on Sunday)

Shocking, exciting, wonderful. (Clive Anderson on 'How to be a Victorian' BBC Radio 4)

Most historians simply research the past; she lives it . . . This book is packed with delicious kernels of knowledge . . . all served up by the most delightfully eccentric author I've ever encountered. Seldom have I had so much fun reading history. Seldom have I learnt so much. (Gerard DeGroot on 'How to be a Tudor' The Times)

A lot of fun, and like all the best history books shows that people in the past were as real as people today (MyShelf.com)