A 15th century Dutch manuscript shows stains of feline urine, and the enraged monk’s caricature of the culprit and malediction against all cats. Not all Christians admired all Creation, or were sure where boundaries lay there were medieval trials of “evil” pigs, rats and weevils.
Some cults adored animals even animal sacrifice is a kind of communion. One of our oldest ideals is being able to talk to animals, as we did in Eden, although few of these mythic conversations ended as badly as Eve’s. So ensues an engaging, insightful consideration of how anthropomorphism, cruelty, egocentrism, empathy, realism and sentimentality have blended and blurred across centuries – teaching us a vast amount about animals, and even more about ourselves. Inevitably, we think about our own companion animals – for me, spaniels, like the one that tried to follow King Charles to the scaffold, and terriers, like the one that charges across this book’s cover. We move onto the anonymous 9th century poet-monk who immortalized his cat Pangur Bán, Anne Boleyn’s dog Purkoy, Samuel Pepys’ cat Gyb, Dr Johnson’s cat Hodge, William Cowper’s hares, and many others. She then revivifies her girlhood’s ginger toms, bantams, guinea pigs, rabbits, voles, and a wolfhound named Fergus, whose basso profundo growl made bearable the blackest Suffolk nights. Full of fascinating details, Pepysbsquo s London is a sensitive exploration into the places that made the greatest English diarist of all time.The author starts this ambitious book with a redhaired man and his red setter wearing matching bandanas and sunglasses, who made her wonder why so many of us feel so impelled to allow unutterably alien animals live at our hearths, and lodge in our hearts. Bringing together geography, biography, and history, Jacky Colliss Harvey reconstructs the sensory and emotional experience of Pepysysquo s time. The city was a key character in Pepyslsquo s life, and this book draws parallels between his experience of seventeenth-century London and the lives of Londoners today.
With Pepyscsquo s London, we come to know life in London from the pavement up and see its streets from the perspective of this renowned diarist.
These streets, where many of his professional conversations took place while walking, became for him an alternative to his office. He made the two-and-a-half-mile trek to Whitehall from his house near the Tower of London on an almost daily basis. Samuel Pepys, the seventeenth century's best-known diarist, walked around London for miles, chronicling these walks in his diary.
Brings to life the world of Samuel Pepys with five walks through London.
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