BleakChesneyWold

                                             If the Devil Learnt to Play Violin  J.Meade Falkner is probably best known for the novel  Moonfleet (1898), set a century or so before, amongst the smugglers of the Dorset coast.  Moonfleet  was  filmed in 1955 and has since been regularly televised. His occult novel The Lost Stradivarius (1895) has now been republished as part of 'British Library Tales of the Weird' , edited with an introduction by Mike Ashley (2025). J.Meade Falkner wrote some five novels and two books of poems. Also a travellers guide to Oxfordshire, and local histories of Oxford and Berkshire. SOCIETY WEBSITE  Mr Ashley also includes the fact that J.Meade Falkner became a private tutor to the son of Sir Andrew Noble. Towards the end of the 19th century J.Meade Falkner became a secretary of the armaments company Armstrong Whitwo...

                Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) Makes a Stand   This is a follow up to the previous  Battle of Solferino 1859  post from this blog.  Series 2 of the Netflix series  The Empress,  based upon the life of Empress Elizabeth of Austria ( better known as 'Sisi') ended with the start of the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859. Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, has to fight off the French under Napoleon III and their Italian allies led by Victor Emanuel II of Piedmont from taking the provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, part of the Austrian Empire. Series 3  of The Empress  will presumably open with the Battle of Solferino in Lombardy. Technically a French and Piedmontese victory. Yet the horror of the battlefield was one of the factors that led to Napoleon III agreeing a peace treaty with Franz Joseph at Villa Franca, and leaving the campaign. A Swiss observer to the carnage at the...