This month's #HistFicThursdays have been all art-inspired, so I'm sticking with that theme! A couple of months ago, the Things to Inspire blog was about sketches . Today's is about finished pieces of artwork! Artwork has been an inspiration for millions of people across thousands of years. Just like a book, the finished product can (hopefully!) be an inspiration. Over the years, we've collected one or two pieces of old artworks, and these are a few... Religious artwork has always been used as an inspiration and, historically, this was how the majority of people interacted with biblical stories. This was a barn find - probably created for someone's own interest judging by the naive style of artwork. It looks like it might have been from a panelled wall at some point. I wonder what happened to the rest of the panels and what story they might show when they are all together... Of course, not all artworks are paintings! Here is a scrimshaw of the Battle of Flamborough
As a child, there was no book scarier than the Weetabix history book's page about The Black Death. Forget horror or ghosts, plague was really scary! It took me a long time to realise that "plague" did not refer to a single event, too. One of the things which led me to this was trying to make sense of the much-loved book The Children of Green Knowe , in which the ghostly children died in the plague three-hundred years after I knew The Black Death had occurred. I don't know at which point I became fascinated with the history of medicine but, around that time, I stopped being so scared of the plague. When, years later, I began writing Day's Dying Glory , one of the key characters just had to be a doctor. Doctor Fotherby became central to what grew into a family saga. Reluctant to let him go, he had a very long life before I conceded that I just could feasibly have him lasting much longer! But Doctor Fotherby belonged to the 18th/19th Centuries, long after this song