Fara Dabhoiwala

In​ a largely illiterate world, laughing was something one did with other people. Early theorists of humour considered it a form of speech rather than writing. And speech could be extremely dangerous, as the Bible warned: ‘Death and life are in the power of the tongue’ (Proverbs); ‘The tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity’ (James). Elsewhere in scripture the tongue...

On Valentine’s Day​ 1661 Elizabeth Pepys and her husband, Sam, rose early and walked from their house behind the Tower of London down Seething Lane. They were to visit one of Sam’s superiors, William Batten, surveyor of the navy. The custom was that women should take the first man they saw as their Valentine, so long as he was no relation. The previous year, Elizabeth had...

In​ 1739, on the outbreak of war with Spain, the British government sent two fleets to attack its enemy’s possessions in South America. A huge armada of nearly two hundred vessels and almost thirty thousand men sailed for the West Indies under the newly promoted Vice Admiral Edward Vernon, hero of the recent taking of Porto Bello in Panama, to capture other key Spanish possessions in...

In​ the autumn of 1928, a previously unknown painting turns up on the London art market. It belongs to a Major Henry Howard of Surrey. He is 45 years old. His father has just died and left him a large estate, and he’s selling off much of it – houses, land, family heirlooms. There are death duties; he has five young daughters and a marriage that’s going to end soon. He needs...