Going through a list of British TV series, it is remarkable just how many of them are Victorian costume dramas. There is even a Victoriana magazine that I have seen some people (esp. women) buy.
It got me thinking about historical periods and when I would like to have lived (hardships notwithstanding).
My 3 would be:
1. AD 650-735 Britain. The intellectual ferment going on at the time is astounding.
2. Early 12th century Germany. Same reason as above.
3. Late 19th century Russia. I like the Tsarist court.
What eras would you pick for yourself, and why?
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Pip pip!
the neolithic - relatively short life spans but a bunch of forward thinking mofos building massive land temples and exploring, trading and travelling troughout europe. No established governments, no armies and very little conflict. How did they manage?
Now. Mountain bikes are pretty good and any later there wont be much of a planet left thats worth riding about on.
Any earlier and I would not have a dropper post.
1920-1939
flappers, cocktails, white ties and heroic cars. Living in the era of [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Keane ]Molly Keane's heros[/url] and [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamara_de_Lempicka ]Tamara Lempicka's paintings[/url]
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In another life I would have been [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolf_Barnato ]Woolf Barnato[/url]
Racing the Blue Train in the Bentley Speed six and marrying a Norwegian Heiress.
*sighs*
EDIT: Hah! CFH you can be my butler.
Mid to late 60s. The best music, the best clothes and the best ladies.
Oh and I could go to Oz for a tenner.
Get back below stairs you uppity oik! 😉
I wouldn't want to live in the past, it was kind of crappy for women in most countries. I'd like to see the future, when there's flying cars, hoverboards, and more importantly (hopefully) a more equal society.
Oh and I could go to Oz for a tenner.
go back a century you could have been sent there for free 🙂
I wouldn't want to live in the past, it was kind of crappy for women in most countries. I'd like to see the future, when there's flying cars, hoverboards, and more importantly (hopefully) a more equal society.
There must've been a time when the Patriarchy didn't exist. When Mother Nature was the deity everyone worshipped and the Green Man was just the sperm donor! Maybe pre-Christianity, them Pagan's seemed to be a bit more enlightened on the equality front.
Personally, I've always liked the Prohibition-era fashion. Although hanging around with the Pyramid builders in South America would've been quite interesting. The Vikings would've known how to have a good knees-up too. Or China a few thousand years back... ...I need a time machine.
This one. Or I guess maybe go back 30 years.
Post war California would suit me
1960's
Ace music, super drugs and free luuuurve... Peace man.
Yeah I'd go back 20 years, then buy stocks in T'Internet startups and register a load of Betting Shop online web addresses.. 🙄 Oh and invent 29er size wheels,
Then I'd start an MTB Mag with an online presence.. call it "middle aged whining track world" where I'd invite (cough) members (cough) to contribute to the Mag, for free. Then I'd set up a Forum for it and invite a select few to become a nuclius of derission/spite and spout vitriol.
I'd also set up a Mobile network off the back of BT's and call it 19 or vodagroan or V-Mobile.
But actually I prefer the Now.
There must've been a time when the Patriarchy didn't exist. When Mother Nature was the deity everyone worshipped and the Green Man was just the sperm donor! Maybe pre-Christianity, them Pagan's seemed to be a bit more enlightened on the equality front.
That was the 1980's, in any given polytechnic.
Now, because I'm boring, maybe a few years earlier.
I like now.
I'd be a hippy in 60s California I think. I'd be thin, blonde, have legs up to my armpits and live by the sea, smoking lots of weed and having lots of sex with other hippies.
Early 90s as I did alot but cant remember any of it.
...
I'm intrigued by 1930s Germany. Despite what I've read I don't understand how so many people could get caught up in the collective wrongness that they ended up with. The swap from the anything-goes days of the Weimar Republic to the Nazi era must have been an interesting time. Wouldn't want to live there, just a long visit (in a nice hotel, with plenty of cash and a passport to let me get out).
Atlaz we are always just an economic downturn and a few sun headlines away from doing it all over again.
I always wanted to be a Spitfire Pilot in WW2, not that I'd have made it with the crap body and eyesight with which I've been gifted, but it was a dream nonetheless. Having said that I'm happt to have grown up in the fifties been coming into my teens when the good music broke, enjoyed the best period ever which was the early seventies with Roxy Music & Bowie, then Glam, then Punk, then new Wave, then new Romantic, it just went on new this and new that, even with the nineties and the snowboard era with Britpop, a shame all you lot have to deal with is David Bowie having a nervous breakdown and some X-Factor crap.
Music wise we had the best of it and civil liberty wise we were better off, if you'd told us in our revolutionary days that in the future we'd be living with the level of intrusion we have now, we'd never have believed it possible.
1811, then I can be one of the Bennett sisters, and turn down Mr Collins.
No, I've not thought about it at all, what makes you think that? 🙂
1780 to 1805, fighting the French pretty much throughout and generally giving them a good biffing!!
I think I read too many Alexander Kent novels....
What Jota said. Though maybe not immediatley post war '49-'60
I'm with Mrs Toast on this, as far into the future as practical, best if the earth is still around and habitable
Ideally I would like to be around when they find life elsewhere (possible in my lifetime) but even better would to be around when we meet it (rather unlikely in my lifetime, unless it's some sort of fish from Europa or a fossilised bacteria from Mars, they are harldy likely to open a whole new future of interstellar travel for us though)
@ Stoner: sounds like you should start saving up for my forthcoming book on the period...
coughs//retirement fund//coughs
There must've been a time when the Patriarchy didn't exist. When Mother Nature was the deity everyone worshipped and the Green Man was just the sperm donor!
Very very early Greece, before all that city state guff.
Just don't end up the Harvest King, bad times
Didnt know it was your era Matt.
Whats the book about?
Its not going to be this boring stuff is it?
with a particular interest in gender, sexualities and selfhood.
😉
20s30s geek / obsessive here... Next book is on an interwar confidence trickster and international man of mystery; currently trying to sort out contract for something more general and accessible on the 1920s after that.
Your post crossed my edit 🙂
Did you ever read Alex T's dissertation?:
"Cocktails and Society in Twentieth Centure Britain" (1997)
He got some great interviews with some oldies who lived the era before they passed away.
Yeah exactly that kind of boring stuff! Same old same old...
And thanks for the tip: embarrassingly I hadn't come across that.
If you have trouble finding a copy at the UL, drop me a line and I can lend you mine. I helped him out with some bits and pieces and he gave me a bound copy.
Will do: thanks!
My own:
No war in my time in my land
A cure for every STD when it mattered
A life better than any king enjoyed pre-1900
Religion is optional
I'd almost certainly be long dead if I'd lived in any other time other than my own.
As i used to be a Wars of the Roses re-enactor i'd love to go back and see how our interpretation of that period clashed with the reality, to see how people actually wore the clothes and armour and how they viewed the political schisms of the time through the prism of religion.
Would also like to be in Rome during the Fall of the Republic & the Rise of the Emperors to see how social(ist?) ideals can be subverted to aid the aims of the rich and powerful - whilst making the plebian masses think it was their idea all along!
Also, go back to the year 878 and see how Alfred the Great created the genesis of the modern state of England from 5 square miles of Somerset marshes, & how his grandson finished the job.
I've always wanted to be a cowboy. Lots of camping and mountains whats not to like?
whilst making the plebian masses think it was their idea
Are we allowed to use the P-word now?
Only in it's correct usage 😛
As an ex/sometime archaeologist, the Mesolithic - but only if I can have access to mountain bikes, antibiotics and a well-stocked library.
edit.
Dunno
victorian england to go and meet the whores of white chapel, look at the loons in bedlam, see the patented steam powered phallus that was displayed in the great exhibition, meet the 4 great Stephensons and see the ideas of Darwin replace the theories of Kant, Linneaus and Malthus
also nice to see etiquette, as manners maketh the man.
Tudor/ Edwardian
Is it bad to go back here?
[url= http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8507/8365877622_8520436307.jp g" target="_blank">
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/73773087@N07/8365877622/ ]g.Series2.spitfireXII[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/73773087@N07/ ]h4muf[/url], on Flickr
Come on, Late Antique-ists/Early Medievalists!
If MattieH can sell his book, I want to sell mine too.
So where are you all? [i]Someone[/i] has to have liked it when Germanic tribes were coming to dominate Europe, the calendar as we know it was taking shape, and swords had names!
Germanic tribes were coming to dominate Europe, the calendar as we know it was taking shape, and swords had names!
nah far more fun with steam/smogs/whores/dirty urchins in street gangs....much like Rotherham still is today
I'd like to go back say, a couple of hundred years, and take my bike. Just imagine the trails! All those great mountain roads would be rocky tracks 🙂
I'd head for that big downhill on the A470 heading into Dinas Mawdwy. What a cracking descent that would make.
@SaxonRider you want to be talking to my old flatmate - very early medievalist. He'd be mad for that stuff.
I reckon Roman times could be pretty cool. Orgies and such like.
The time when the Anglish and Saxon/Jutish tribes were settling the Eastern Shore of Britain, and the Franks were invading Gaul would be an interesting time to see - if only to disprove the claims of St Gildas that the Saxons et.al. had no art, no culture & no worth...
So where are you all? Someone has to have liked it when Germanic tribes were coming to dominate Europe, the calendar as we know it was taking shape, and swords had names!
God yeah, when you have Clovis &co. destroying (and arguably rebuilding) what was left of the western Roman empire? Definitely, "dark ages" for me 🙂
Dealey Plaza, Texas, 1963.
With a damn good video camera.
Maybe Nazareth, couple of thousand years ago.
Just to see what, if anything was occuring.