How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain

Description

Every age and every social strata has its bad eggs, those who break all the rules and rub everyone up the wrong way. This is not a history of criminal behaviour as such, although some of the activities in this book shade into the legally dubious; rather, it is a study of the niggling, anti-social, irritating ways that people have kicked back against prevailing social mores. Drunkards, swashbucklers and harridans rub shoulders with people with disgusting table manners and neighbours whose dung heaps and noise drove others crazy. Historian and popular TV presenter Ruth Goodman draws upon advice books and manuals, court cases and sermons, drama and imagery to outline bad behaviour from the gauche to the galling, the subtle to the outrageous. Ruth will explore the details of those behaviours, such as just how far apart your feet should be if you wish to mock a soldier or how to parody the walk of a preacher to the amusement of your friends and if you do blow your nose during dinner how to put everyone off their food.

Ruth Goodman is a historian of the social and domestic life of Britain. How we lived our daily lives, the practical nitty gritty, and why we did it that way. These seemingly little things change the world. Our day to day routines have a huge cumulative effect on the environment, our shopping habits can sway the world's patterns of trade, how we organise and run our family life sets the political tone of nations. We matter. Us, the little people, women, children and even men. How our ancestors solved the problems of everyday life made the world what it is today. Ruth works regularly with museums, theatre, television and educational establishments offering advice services, lectures and practical workshops. She is also as the resident expert on The One Show and presented the BBC 2 shows Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Wartime Farm, Tudor Monastery Farm, Inside the Food Factory and most recently, Full Steam Ahead.

impeccable... [Goodman's] research is as comprehensive as the advice she metes out to those wishing to emulate the bad behaviour of their ancestors -- Tracy Borman * BBC History Magazine * Entertaining * History Revealed Magazine * This is a masterclass of bad behaviour... a lively romp through early modern British social history * Who Do You Think You Are Magazine * I absolutely love this book. Exuberant, absorbing . . . there's scarcely a detail of Victorian life Ruth has not tried. -- A. N. Wilson on 'How to be a Victorian' * Mail on Sunday * Shocking, exciting, wonderful. -- Clive Anderson on 'How to be a Victorian' * BBC Radio 4 * Most historians simply research the past; she lives it . . . This book is packed with delicious kernels of knowledge . . . all served up by the most delightfully eccentric author I've ever encountered. Seldom have I had so much fun reading history. Seldom have I learnt so much. -- Gerard DeGroot on 'How to be a Tudor' * The Times * A lot of fun, and like all the best history books shows that people in the past were as real as people today * MyShelf.com *