Daisy Hay

Early​ in the first notebook of Jane Austen’s teenage writings is a work entitled ‘Jack and Alice: a novel’; it runs to a little over 5500 words and was probably written between 1789 and 1791. The story is a gleeful demolition of adult nonsense, on most prominent display at a masquerade:

Such was the party assembled in the elegant Drawing Room of Johnson Court, amongst which...

In the autumn​ of 1777, as the American War ground on, Charles James Fox paid his first visit to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire at Chatsworth. The young duchess was captivated by her new house guest. His conversation, Georgiana told her mother, ‘is like a brilliant player at billiards, the strokes follow one another piff paff’. For his part, Fox was enamoured of his hostess...

In my teens​ I walked to school each day past a red pillar box on Banbury Road in Oxford, said to have been installed by the Royal Mail to ease the labours of James Murray at the helm of the Oxford English Dictionary. With a magnificent incuriosity, I never thought to wonder at the strangeness of a post box positioned to enable a dictionary – it was simply where I deposited weekly...