Where Queen Elizabeth Slept and What the Butler Saw: A Treasury of Historical Terms from the Sixteenth Century to the Present [Paperback]

David N. Durant (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312195699 | ISBN-13: 978-0312195694 | Publication Date: July 15, 1998 | Edition: 1st

Who was a tweenie? How did an ice house work and where would you find a crinkum-crankum wall? What was a chesterfield for, or a Claude glass, and how did a clock jack improve your dinner? The answers to these and many other questions appear in this dictionary, which is a feast of information and trivia for history buffs everywhere wanting to know more than just dates and dry facts. They want to know how people lived: what they ate, how they spoke, how they dressed, what games they played, what their homes looked like. This unique dictionary reveals the fascinating details of life, allowing the reader to travel back in time and experience a typical day in any century from the sixteenth to our own. A book to give hours of pleasure whether browsed through or used for reference-it contains a wealth of unexpected information.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Durant (Life in the Country House, John Murray, 1996) has compiled a lay reader's dictionary of British historical terms and trivia from 1500 to 1950. The entries mix definitions of terms such as trencher (slices of stale bread, used as a plate) and merrybegot (out-of-wedlock child) with cursory discussions of social topics like enclosure and trade unions. Though Durant has a dry wit, the book's 450-year scope makes it mainly a collection of widely scattered facts. Durant's personal interests (religion, architecture) are overrepresented, resulting in some lopsided entries, and the slight bibliography and lack of footnotes will annoy scholars. An optional purchase where British history is popular; Daniel Pool's similar What Jane Austen Ate & Charles Dickens Knew (LJ 7/93), though concerned mainly with the 19th century, is equally informative and more entertaining.?Robert Persing, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphia
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

David N. Durant, the author of several historical studies and biographies, lectures in Britain and the United States on British social and architectural history. He lives in Nottinghamshire.

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (July 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312195699
• ISBN-13: 978-0312195694
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,526,035 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great for looking up how everyday life changed over time, June 9, 2000

By 

drdebs (CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where Queen Elizabeth Slept and What the Butler Saw: A Treasury of Historical Terms from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (Paperback)

This is a great book if you want to compare the everyday life of someone in one period with another period in a general way--but it is less fulsome on details than other historical guides specific to one period, and is not terribly specific about when these changes took place. You get lots of phrases like "in the second half of the 17th century" which give you a fair amount of guesswork. Still, if you are interested in daily life in a historical perspective this should prove to be a good addition to your bookshelf.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More a type of dictionary, May 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Where Queen Elizabeth Slept and What the Butler Saw: A Treasury of Historical Terms from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (Paperback)

This book was more a dictionary than anything. I thought it would explain historical terms as in a story, but it has terms and definitions. Good book if you are looking up terms but as to everyday life and language it is not so good.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Some useful information but there are LOTS of problems, February 1, 2011

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Where Queen Elizabeth Slept and What the Butler Saw: A Treasury of Historical Terms from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (Paperback)

I spent a long career as a reference librarian in a very large public library system, and what most civilians would regard as "trivia" is all part of the day's work to the folks behind the reference desk. Books like this can be very useful in adding to one's storehouse of miscellaneous knowledge, but they tend to be rather uneven. Subtitled "A Treasury of Historical Terms from the Sixteenth Century to the Present," the present volume simply represents a gathering-up of whatever the author knew or could find out. Of course, lacking an index, and sometimes being prey to peculiar alphabetization, a book like this is best consumed by browsing -- and in that regard, it's a great time-sink. There are many useful entries, such as those for Fleet Prison, Game Laws, Birth Control, Picture hanging, Presentation at Court, and all the variety of pre-Dissolution religious orders, just as a sampling. There are also a number of detailed entries for liturgical vestments and for types of household furniture not much seen these days. Interesting random terms whose origins (and even meanings) are often not understood by modern readers include Burking, Mews, Masques, Riot Act, Coroner, and the Oxford Movement. Because Durant is an expert in British architectural history, there are an inordinate number of listings for architects and designers, most of whom the reader will never have heard of (except for Christopher Wren, Robert Adam, and Capability Brown, probably), and won't really care. Similarly, there are far too many entries for such specialized design and decoration terms as "grisaille," "pietra dura," "Ormolu," and "Biedermeier." And the article on "Brickwork" runs for a page and a half. Coverage could have been better rationalized. Why, for instance, have a separate entry for "between-maids" (known as "tweenies"), but not for all the varieties of maids to be found in a large household? Butlers, housekeepers, and footmen have their own entries but everyone else is lumped together under "Servants" and "Outdoor Servants." (The last two should have been combined, by the way, for convenience in finding them.) Beau Brummell gets his own article but his illustrious and less-known predecessor, Beau Nash, is only mentioned in the article on Bath. And there are brief entries for cricket, croquet, and polo, but not for rugby football -- an equally British institution. Why entries for general (non-historical, non-British) terms like "ghosts"? And why confine huge concepts like "Feudalism" to brief entries which cannot help but be misleading? The same can be said for the page on "Crusades," which considerably predates the 16th century. There are numerous quotations and anecdotes sprinkled through the entries, many of them interesting and amusing. But why quote frequently from Samuel Pepys without according him his own entry? Regarding reference apparatus, cross-references are indicated by SMALL CAPS, but their use would have benefited from a copyeditor's attention; many references within an article to other topics appear in regular type. On the other hand, the word "luncheon" is small-typed in the article on "Gong, dressing" but there's no entry for it. (You'll find it under "Meals, times of eating.") There's a very brief bibliography -- but if the author thought one were needed at all, he included some very odd titles and omitted most of the more obvious ones. Finally, even though it would have considerably enlarged the book and increased its cost, it would have been nice to have illustrations for such topics as all the species of carriages and lesser wheeled transport.