In my article ‘Poor, Old and Ugly?’ in the August 2016 issue of History Today (and reproduced here with permission) I argue that women prosecuted for witchcraft in 16th and 17th century England were not usually the stereotypical old hags, living on the margins of society, that you find in folk tales. This stereotype was of […]
Anthony Ryle (we all knew him as Tony) died on 29th September at the age of 89 in a Sussex nursing home where he was a resident with Flora, his wife. He had been unwell for a number of years, though nonetheless active until very recently, and he faced circumstances with his customary realism, and […]
It is easier to discuss the age of women prosecuted for witchcraft in 17th century continental Europe (see previous blog post) than in England because their age was sometimes specified in court records. This was very rarely the case in English records. Women’s marital status was, however, generally given, so ‘wife’ and ‘widow’ can be […]
The manuscript of Anthony Ryle’s wartime diary, in four quarto volumes, has been deposited in the Department of Documents at the Imperial War Museum. It is not at present findable in the Museum’s online catalogue, but is in fact recorded as ‘Documents.24999 – Private Papers of A Ryle’, and can be seen at the IWM research […]
In our post on the donation of Anthony Ryle’s diary to the Imperial War Museum, I mentioned how rare it is to find substantial diaries by adolescents which cover the time and events which Anthony’s does. Sustained diaries from people in this age group are rare in public collections for any historical period. It is […]
