Unexpected visitor to a suburban library in Adelaide last night

In 1836 George Elers, who had known Wellington in India forty years before, tried to palm off an unwanted St Bernard dog onto the Duke. (Elers had inherited the dog from a friend and had already tried unsuccessfully to give it to a lady who had jilted the friend). Wellington’s reply was concise.

The reply is wonderfully in character

Rob, I looked in James’s Naval History of Great Britain which is comprehensive and chronological but couldn’t see anything for that exact date. Here’s the relevant passage which shows something on the 13th. (vol 3 p 255-56)

Publication day today of my book Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen published by Yale UP - will take a bit longer to arrive in Australia

My new book Love and Marriage in the Age of Jane Austen comes out in February, published by @yalpress.bsky.social It looks at how couples met, courted, got married and their lives together, using a wide range of first hand accounts and some of the fiction of the period. #JaneAusten

Not saying you’re wrong but consider the other side of the equation as well. According to Google:

The book is beautifully written and immensely engaging, and Childs constantly shows ‘what it was like’ including in an outstanding few pages of evocation that begins by asking that question explicitly.

I’ve just finished reading Jessie Childs’s The Siege of Loyalty House about the long siege of Basing House in the Civil War. It isn’t really a military history, but instead a micro history that uses this one story to make vivid the wider history. #LoyaltyHouse #EarlyModern #BritishCivilWars

Rowdy says HAPPY BIRTHDAY - as do I

And there is a good modern biography of Pack, with a full account of his career, by Marcus Beresford

Here’s a story from the 1790s, that caught my eye @emilybrand.bsky.social @profelainechalus.bsky.social @latelordchatham.bsky.social