Lucy Allen-Goss

History's Heroes - History's Toughest Heroes - Margery Kempe: Ministry of Tears - BBC Sounds A medieval woman finds superhuman strength in her tears.

The fabulous @laurakalas.bsky.social talking about toughness and Margery Kempe with Ray Winstone on Radio 4. Absolutely wonderful. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Oh, I am delighted! Yay! (I mean, not about the AI, but thank you very much for recommending my stuff. I love the Legend and hope you are enjoying teaching it!)

The cover of a book. Text reads TEXTILE SHAKESPEARE. The illustration is of black and white embroidery of flowers, fruit, and animals; it's sitting on a blue and white William Morris print cushion.

The table of contents of a book. The chapter titles read Stuff, Linen, Leather/Wool, Silk, Inky Cloak, Sew, Cut, Fold, Ruff.

Somewhat astonishingly, here it is, a book, a thing in the world... More, including acknowledgements, soon❤️

In this blog post, Julian Goodare share insights into why those accused of #witchcraft would confess and what to expect from his co-edited book, Scottish Witchcraft Trials.🧙‍♀️ Read the blog: buff.ly/Qo4ouEA

Thank you!

We are not the granddaughters of the witches you couldn't burn: why the myth of 'lost women's healing knowledge' needs to go. It is Halloween, and I am seeing a whirl of posts about witches, so here’s a quick post.

One for Halloween, on a myth that really never seems to die. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/we-are-not...

Writing about food and memory, and thinking back to this interview I did with Cara De Silva, who later became a friend, and whose passing I still mourn. It's on "eating with the mind", and the ways even stories of food can keep people going.

irinadumitrescu.com/wp-content/u...

Textile Shakespeare Buy Textile Shakespeare by Lees-Jeffries, Hester (ISBN: 9780198861133) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

I don't like linking to wretched Am*z*n but a sample of my book has just appeared (most of the introduction, it looks like, and the plates!) and, well, I hope you like it. Proper publication next month. EEEEEK.
www.amazon.co.uk/Textile-Shak...

Ooh! I need this!

They are lovely in tart tatin too - or just cooked in a buttery caramel without the tatin TBF! I love quinces.

I kind of loathe the 'not your grandma's knitting' shit, AND the 'see it's not just silly woman stuff' push, because I think actually what we need to do is to accept that traditionally feminine crafts are actually very complicated and skilled, rather than divorce them from femininity to accept that.

Let me know if you need a copy!

And Rachel Delman's lovely piece on the birthing chamber.

Oh! And there is a fab paper about a Jewish midwife, Floreta d'ays- do you know it? Dan Smail and Green, and great fun to teach.

Kim Phillips did a great paper on wet nurses at gms 2024; might be useful?

Rightly or wrongly (I still haven't figured out Bluesky), I am going to keep sharing this, because I think infertilty and pregnancy loss matter, and I think we really need to hear that the grief around early loss isn't a recent thing. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/what-is-to...

Thank you - that's a lovely thing to say.

What is too small for grief? A post for pregnancy loss awareness day

I wrote this yesterday for #pregnancylossawareness day. I truly think it matters, and I am currently woking on a book about the histories that we urgently need to rediscover when we talk about this subject. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/what-is-to...

Yes, and they were shorter anyway (my parents still have a rural phone number that's a digit shorter than all automated forms expected it to be, and I remember both times it acquired new digits).

The ancient ones performed feats of memory, as their culture required them to commit long strings of numbers to their mind palaces.

I know - hence the 'now I've got your attention' bit. It's a bit of a running joke amongst medievalists that people think witch-burning was a medieval thing.

What the Witch and her Cow-Sucking Bag can tell us about Early Modern Misogyny Medieval witch stories, and a literary grandmother for the Wife of Bath

Did you know they burned witches in medieval times?

Right, now I've got your attention, here's some *actual* medieval witching - and it is entirely adorable, if slightly smutty.

lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/what-the-w...

What the Witch and her Cow-Sucking Bag can tell us about Early Modern Misogyny Medieval witch stories, and a literary grandmother for the Wife of Bath

The Witch and her Cow-Sucking Bag is, and always will be, the best ever medieval witch story. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/what-the-w...

This looks excellent.

Some of them are, though apparently it's not a good idea as there's an acid in them that really ought to be cooked. NB, I discovered this several years ago, *after* my toddler munched handfuls. She suffered no ill effects. :D

So satisfying!

*Want*

Dill, Sour Cream, and Memories The wind is getting up again now.

New post meandering around nostalgia, and food, and Eamon Duffy on memory and loss.
lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/dill-sour-...

Lovely! Thank you. :D

'Breaking Bread with the Dead': Marlowe, Greenblatt, and Living Latin ‘Breaking bread with the dead, sir, it’s what we do.’ The speaker in Alan Bennett’s History Boys (the 2006 film of the 2004 play) is 18-year-old Akhtar, en route to Oxbridge, entirely convinced of his...

Snarking at Greenblatt's Marlowe. But also, Cynthia Harnett doing (so I am assured) an extremely accurate, lovely depiction of a fifteenth-century boy enjoying writing in Latin. lucyallengoss.substack.com/p/breaking-b...