If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home [Hardcover]

Lucy Worsley (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 28, 2012 | ISBN-10: 9780802779953 | ISBN-13: 978-0802779953 | Edition: 1

Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did Samuel Pepys never give his mistresses an orgasm? Why did medieval people sleep sitting up? When were the two "dirty centuries"? Why did gas lighting cause Victorian ladies to faint? Why, for centuries, did people fear fruit? All these questions will be answered in this juicy, smelly, and truly intimate history of home life. Lucy Worsley takes us through the bedroom, bathroom, living room, and kitchen, covering the architectural history of each room, but concentrating on what people actually did in bed, in the bath, at the table, and at the stove. From sauce-stirring to breast-feeding, teeth-cleaning to masturbation, getting dressed to getting married, this book will make you see your home with new eyes.

Praise for If Walls Could Talk:

"Dr. Lucy Worsley charts the evolution of the British home … It's a fascinating journey."-Daily Mail (UK )

"Anecdotes, jokes and fascinating facts come thick and fast … Worsley's eye for quirky detail is so compelling you quickly find yourself gripped by the most unlikely subjects."-Mail on Sunday (UK )

"Saucy intimacies and salacious secrets … I was glued."-Country Life (UK )

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Who could not be enthralled by the history of toilet paper? Anyone who lives in a home with a kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom will delight in reading this history of the development of home life." ---Kirkus Starred Review

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

About the Author

Lucy Worsley is, by day, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, the independent charity that looks after The Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace State Apartments, the Banqueting House in Whitehall, and Kew Palace in Kew Gardens. By night, she is a writer and presenter, most recently author of Cavalier: a Tale of Passion, Chivalry and Great Houses, described by the Mail on Sunday as ‘a remarkable achievement by an immensely talented and innovative historian.'

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company; 1 edition (February 28, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780802779953
• ISBN-13: 978-0802779953
• ASIN: 0802779956
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,801 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Making magic by imagining the past January 16, 2012

By Rett01 TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition

Want to know how Tudor England dealt with a gravy stain on the tablecloth? They peed on it. Or more accurately and with more decorum, the household laundry staff blotted the greasy spot with urine, which it turns out is a great stain-fighting agent.

Worsley loves to ham it up and obviously delights in imagining all that history can offer the present. Her interest is infectious and passing on her enthusiasm seems to be her purpose in writing the book. To me, she succeeds in a way as entertaining as educating.

The book is a tour of four main rooms of the house from medieval times forward, the bedroom, bathroom, living room and kitchen. Throughout, anecdote means more than evidence.

The Victorian bedroom, for example was a place as you can imagine for many things. Among them, it served as an operating room where Restoration diarist Samuel Pepys famously had surgery to remove bladder stones.

The preparations took place in a cousin's bedchamber. "Pepys was tied down on a table so that he could not thrash about, and two strong men were also present to 'hold him by the knees' and `by the arm-holes.' "

When death came to Mary II from smallpox in 1694, "rich gums and spices to stuff the body" kept her corpse sweet smelling during the period of mourning. (I couldn't help but think of the accounts of exploding pontiffs whose bodies were prohibited by canon law from being embalmed.)

Bill Bryson covers much of the same territory as Worsley in his cultural history "At Home." His book felt to me as cluttered as some of the overstuffed rooms he described. Where Bryson aggregates facts and offers up lists, Worsley tells us how people lived.

For example, where Bryson instructs us on the making of soap, Worsley recounts that Henry VIII paid his laundress Anne Harris Ł10 a year to wash his tablecloths and towels but out of that she had to supply her own soap. It's much more entertaining and enlightening to learn from Worsley why for two centuries people feared eating fruit that it is to be given a list of apples found in the 19th century English kitchen.

In Lucy Worsley's capable hands the past comes across more often as being a candlelit, cheerful place filled with sweet and savory aromas. That's because she's tightly filtering history through a prism of the upper classes. She doesn't dig too deeply into the muck and mire by examining lives of those who lived in squalor. Worsley gives us a merry look at upper class cultural history that more than anything makes "If Walls Could Talk" eminently readable.
[I read the U.K. edition, hardcover]

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Popular history at its best May 20, 2011

By Derek Jones

Format:Kindle Edition

This is not a work of original historical research. There are no footnotes, and Dr Worsley acknowledges that the book is based on secondary rather than primary sources. It is popular history written to accompany a TV series and an extremely well-written example of the genre. The bedroom, bathroom, living and kitchen are lenses through which we view architecture, technology and social history since medieval times, with a cornucopia of interesting facts and humorous anecdotes. The social history ranges widely over fashion, food, sex, class, hygiene, and etiquette. Lucy Worsley covers everything in an informative and amusing way, ranging from the history of the bed and its uses to how people wiped their bottoms in the past.

If the TV series which accompanied the book in the UK is shown in the US (or the DVD is offered for sale) be sure to watch it. Worsley is a quite wonderful presenter with a posh girl accent and great clarity of diction, combined with an ability to make everything she says seem interesting.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun, quirky read - non-fiction at its best February 9, 2012

By 100bookproject

Format:Kindle Edition

`If Walls Could Talk' by Lucy Worsley is for the reader who has ever seen pictures of historical figures decked out in cumbersome, baroque finery and thought to themselves: "Hang on, how would they pee?"

This book is written the way all historical non-fiction should be written - with familiarity and humour. Worsley has covered the history of all things domestic, from the bedroom to the bathroom to the kitchen. That's sounds like a dull topic, right? Wrong.

Most people generally don't appreciate how far we had to come from cleaning our teeth with twigs and salt like the Tudors (and conforming to the waxing and waning of attitudes towards bathing) to today where we generally enjoy the highest level of health, hygiene and comfort.

`If Walls Could Talk' contains the answers to the things you've always wondered about life in the past. Worsley also explains things you didn't even know you were curious about - such as old-school contraception, the Elizabethan answer to blonde-in-a-bottle and what knights were wearing for underwear beneath all that chainmail (hardly anything).

What I Loved:
I while I had a general understanding that everyone `back then' was smelly and over-dressed, I was shocked by the customs and beliefs that shaped the way we live today - the way we dress, raise our children and even the way we sleep at night. This is the kind of history that everyone can relate to and yet no one seems to talk about. I was never taught this kind of history at school - if I had been, maybe I would have enjoyed that subject more.

What was Lacking:
Some people will find some topics more interesting than others, but that is also kind of the appeal of this book - there is something for everyone.
Quote:
"Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why did strangers share their beds? And why did rich people fear fruit? These are the kinds of questions I want to address..."

This will particularly draw readers who enjoy TV shows such as The Tudors and Downton Abbey, or who have an interest in family history. A fun, quirky read - I have never enjoyed a history book so much as I enjoyed this.

The publication date of `If Walls Could Talk' is 7th March 2012, but it is available for pre-order on amazon

Thankyou to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for allowing me to view this book before its release.

This review and more on my blog:
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