Naomi Clifford

Kitty Cochrane: Adventurer for Latin American Independence

28 April 2023Naomi Clifford

It is my great pleasure to host an extract of Charmian Kenner’s new book Revolutionary Partners: Sarah Andrews and British Campaigners for Latin American Independence. Charmian Kenner sets the scene: Naomi’s blog about Thomas Cochrane and Kitty Barnes told the story of a daring Scottish naval captain and his young bride, who eloped in 1812. […]

Contraceptives in the late 19th century

28 March 2023Naomi Clifford

What choices were available to women in the late 19th century?

Who lived in Park Lane (the cheap end)?

9 January 2023Naomi Clifford

WHAT DO YOU think when you hear the words Park Lane? Do think Oooooh posh? After all, Park Lane, is Mayfair, once home to millionaires, celebritiesand aristocrats. The money is still there, of course, but now Park Lane is mostly hotels, luxury car showrooms and casinos.

Mr Giovanelli, the cancan and the demise of Highbury Barn

9 January 2023Naomi Clifford

In my WIP (work in progress, or more accurately WISP, work in slow progress) some of my characters go to Highbury Barn in north London and witness some lewd behaviour…

“A Distant Memory”

9 January 2023Naomi Clifford

I recently rediscovered this short story, which I wrote as English homework on 1 November 1969, when I was eleven. Miss Thomas gave it an A minus minus and a “Quite good”…

Eugène Appert, who photoshopped the Paris Commune

9 January 2023Naomi Clifford

DEEP IN THE stacks archives at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France is a small fat photograph album, barely eleven and a half centimetres tall. It has been made for a specific purpose: to hold cartes de visite, the palm-sized photographic ‘calling cards’ that were popular in the latter part of the nineteenth century…

Louise Michel tours the Lambeth workhouse

9 January 2023Naomi Clifford

Louise Michel is tangential to the action that takes place in Paris in my forthcoming book Marguerite. There are archive sources that suggest that during the final bloody week of the Commune Marguerite fought alongside Michel on the barricades at Clignancourt but they are, in my view, unreliable…

We’re off to Millbank

9 January 2023Naomi Clifford

FROM 1818 TO 1890, when it was torn down to create the Tate Gallery, Millbank Penitentiary was home to thousands of prisoners, including, for a few months, the subject of my work in progress, Marguerite Diblanc…

Out of the Shadows: Essays on 18th and 19th Century Women

7 September 2022Naomi Clifford

It’s always a bit cringey to be advertising one’s own wares but let’s not be silly… deep breath… here goes. I have compiled some of my research and longer website articles into a slim volume titled Out of the Shadows: Essays on 18th and 19th Century Women, published by Caret Press. (Note: Caret Press is […]

A new book on Vauxhall Gardens!

6 January 2022Naomi Clifford

If you have loved Bridgerton, Vanity Fair, Sanditon and the many other books and TV series to feature a twirl around Vauxhall Gardens you will welcome this new volume of essays by David E. Coke, a leading expert in London’s pleasure gardens of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The book follows on from Coke’s […]

The Walters Art Museum

24 July 2021Naomi Clifford

From the website: “Because the Walters owns or has jurisdiction over the objects in its collection and owns or customarily obtains the rights to any imaging of its collection objects, it has adopted the Creative Commons Zero: No Rights Reserved or CC0 license to waive copyright and allow for unrestricted use of digital images and metadata by […]

Property Rites: How ‘modern’ is the story of Mary Ashford?

27 April 2021Naomi Clifford

As a warning to female virtue, and a humbleMonument to female chastity,This stone marks the grave ofMARY ASHFORD,Who, in the 20th year of her age,Having incautiously repaired to aScene of amusement, without proper protection,Was brutally violated and murderedOn the 27th of May 1817. Mary Ashford’s gravestone, Sutton Coldfield churchyard Early one May morning in 1817 […]

Watch “By her own consent”: Mary Ashford and Rape Culture in the Georgian Era

14 December 2020Naomi Clifford

A chance to see the talk I delivered online for Vauxhall History and South Lambeth Library on 8 December 2020. I explore the story of Mary Ashford’s murder in 1817 and look at what it tells us about rape in the 18th and early 19th centuries.