The Queen's Rangers

Here we have The Queen's Rangers: members of the Society of King George the Third, who provide lectures and displays about this British regiment, raised by Colonel Robert Rogers during the American War of Independence. Sadly, I missed the drills because I hadn't got hold of a programme, but it was great to see their distinctive uniforms and the regimental tents, complete with Georgian furniture.







Photographs © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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The Georgian Market

It's been the typical damp British summer weather for The Lichfield Festival's Georgian Market today, though it was still a very good turnout. There have been more Morris men than you could shake a bladder on a stick at, and there was even a temporary gibbet constructed outside the Cathedral, with an invitation to 'meet the executioner'.

Check out my pictures below; I'm not sure who the handsomely dressed soldiers were (above), waiting in line for a venison burger, or the lady in the pink gown by the ice cream van, but the chap speaking into a microphone was the ominous Night Soil Man. The last picture is of a lady I spotted outside the Johnson Birthplace Museum this morning playing Handel on a recorder.

Some more pix to follow in a separate post about the Society of King George the Third who provided men from The Queen's Rangers and a fantastic display on the lawn outside the Cathedral.











Photographs © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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Lichfield's Darwin House Relaunched

I'm a bit embarrassed that it's taken me a whole week to blog on this, but last weekend we spent a pleasant few hours at a small market outside the Erasmus Darwin House (see below) and also enjoyed free entry inside, to mark the relaunch of the museum after a £100,000 refurbishment (as reported by the Lichfield Blog).


I noticed that they had removed the life-sized sculpture of Darwin from downstairs and turned the room into a re-creation of the doctor's study, with some nifty projection that reminded me a lot of the Benjamin Franklin Museum in London. I also liked the armchairs in the sitting room at the front, with built-in speakers and headphones playing domestic dialogues and snatches of Darwin's poetry (again, this was not unlike the chairs in the Handel room at the Foundling Museum where you can listen to Messiah etc.)


We didn't get our silhouettes made (see above) but did end up buying some wine and a vine from Halfpenny Green Vineyard which is studded with tiny green grapes. We think that Darwin would have approved.

Photographs © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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Revolutionary Nosh

Providing you can cope with the frankly appalling table-manners of Giles Coren and Sue Perkins, the other night’s Supersizers Eat… The French Revolution contains some interesting food history and all the might of the BBC costume department. Witness Perkins trying to glide in a corset and Coren decapitating eggs in the style of King Louis XVI. It seems to be viewable on BBC iPlayer for the near future at least.

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Your City in Lights!

If, like me, you completely forgot to attend the day at the Guildhall where you had the chance to be filmed, and thus become part Lichfield’s Son et Lumière display as part of Dr Johnson’s birthday celebrations in Lichfield in September, then get down to the Birthplace Museum on July 25th to meet the artists and get a second chance at being filmed (10.30am to 4.30pm, free).

The event is called Your City in Lights! and you can bring any objects relating to your family or local history to be photographed too. Somehow, this event seems to have been roped into the Cultural Olympiad – a series of ‘cultural’ events funded off the back of the 2012 Olympics – and it’s one of the better things on offer, unless you consider sports training workshops to be cultural.

Anyhow - don’t get me started on funding in the arts; I’m going along to try to get my mugshot up on the side of the Guildhall and will also try to get some pix for the blog.

Photograph © Memoirs of the Celebrated Mrs Woffington.

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