When historians of the future come to write about the historiographical preoccupations of 21st-century Britons, they surely will observe our growing obsession with consumer behaviour and material culture. One particular trend in the last 20 years has been the widening of methodologies employed by historians, from the traditional text-based approaches to archival research, to a wider conceptualisation of all forms of historical evidence as artefacts, including the written and printed word. This has allowed a broadening of the traditional purview of the historian, opening up new possibilities for studying all manner of material goods which previously had been considered more within the milieu of the archaeologist or art connoisseur than the historian. But we have needed pioneers, historians skilled in rendering the discrete and often daunting specialist languages of diverse fields such as art history, design history and archaeology into workable tools. Underpinning historians’ reticence about using material culture has also been a certain political attitude regarding the ‘proper’ nature of research. Is interpreting an artefact in a museum as worthy as squirreling away in an obscure archive? A similar doubt hangs over the increasing availability of high-quality online resources. The Old Bailey Online project allows keyword searches to be performed in a matter of seconds: but is it somehow ‘cheating’? Jekyll designed gardens in a non-traditional way: she made them to look like paintings instead of the highly formal style of the time. But in the latter half of the 19th Century, the Arts and Crafts movement placed them right in the spotlight.' An Englishman's house is his castle after all. This series gets to the bottom of this very British obsession and recreates the interior lives, hopes and dreams of women and men. The importance of the past lies as much in the history of relationships and private rituals as in public institutions like universities and parliament. I am fascinated by how people lived their day-to-day lives, their secret struggles and their longings.

Women had gained a toehold in the institutions that preceded the Royal Academy. The Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (known as the Society of Arts) was established in 1754, with a mission to encourage innovation in agriculture, manufacture, chemistry, mechanics, polite arts, colonies and trade. In 1759, Moser – a daughter of an enamellist and then aged 14 – won a silver medal in the category of ‘Polite Arts’ for a painting of a vase of flowers, and several other women exhibited in sections on drawing, needlework and engraving in a small display. Art historian Marcia Pointon has suggested that the Society’s openness to industry may have encouraged women to enter from the applied arts end of the spectrum of trades.

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Matthew, H. C. G.; Harrison, B., eds. (23 September 2004). "The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp.ref:odnb/59566. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/59566 . Retrieved 24 January 2023. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) In the evening, social life really took off. London during the eighteenth century offered a multitude of entertainments. Women acted as hostesses for political dinners and parties at their London homes—carefully deciding whom to invite and which parties to attend. Outside of private parties, London offered the opera, theatre, and pleasure gardens (the two most famous being Vauxhall and Ranelagh). Not only entertaining, these were places to see and be seen. None of which suggests anything approaching equality of the sexes among the Membership. In 1777 for instance, by my count of the exhibition catalogues, of 190 exhibitors 15 were women (8 per cent) and of 364 paintings 27 were by women (7 per cent). Yet for all their minority status it is still striking that the female artists are there, and seem to be making a professional living, supported to a degree by the RA.

Academic scholarship can be a lonely business. There is just no substitute for years sat alone reading documents - a patient, solitary detective. But I am not a natural hermit, so collaborative working was a real pleasure for me. I leapt at the opportunity to communicate my research to an audience far beyond the academy - the intelligent listening public. Mutton Dressed as Lamb? Fashioning Age in Georgian England’, Journal of British Studies (link is external), 2013, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (link is external)(Yale University Press, 2009) A history book of the year in the Independent, Guardian, New York Times, Scottish Herald, History Today. Shortlisted for the Hessel-Tiltman History Prize. And if you were strapped for space, why not invest in some ingenious metamorphic furniture (multi-purpose tables, wardrobes that turned into beds) to get the most out of your bedsit?ed.] Gender, Taste, and Material Culture in Britain and North America, 1700-1830 (2006) ISBN 0300116594 Other exclusions were driven by the shape of the field. Church court cases are a colourful source for gender dynamics at home and bear directly on my core themes, but I was conscious that these have been used already for related purposes in Joanne Bailey, Unquiet Lives: Marriage and Marriage Breakdown in England, 1660–1800, Elizabeth Foyster, Marital Violence: An English Family History, 1660–1857 and most recently Junko Akamatsu’s London University thesis on the court of arches. (3) I must say I agree with those who felt that she was insensitive in expressing such disappointment when she saw the portrait of the man whose diaries had enthused her. That was definitely a faux pas, but still an error born of over-enthusiasm I think, and too much enthusiasm is always better than too little.

It's our attitude to house and home which defines the British as a people. Let foreigners keep their apartments, most Brits want their own front door and a patch of garden. Only when he married and set up home did a frustrated boy become a fully fledged man. I used the plaintive diaries of half-baked bachelors Dudley Ryder and John Courtney to show how men yearned for domesticity. I am unashamedly interested in emotion, character and choices – this is the subject matter of most fiction, romantic or otherwise, but it is also the stuff of history. When I was researching my book, I was gripped by the papers of a stone mason’s family. In the 1870s a style of art known as Impressionism made it easier for people without formal training to paint. Professor Matthew Hilton,Vice-Principal (Humanities and Social Sciences) at Queen Mary said: "I am delighted that both Galin and Amanda have been elected as Fellows of the British Academy in recognition of their excellent work in the humanities. The pandemic has shown us the importance of these disciplines in understanding and interpreting the world around us. I congratulate them both on this well-deserved achievement." About the British Academy FellowshipThe recognisably modern middle class home was taking shape in the 18th Century when Britannia ruled the waves and became the world's leading manufacturing power. I have pieced together a narrative from courtship letters, confessions and wills, diaries and autobiographies, inventories, advertisements, burglary trials, and upholsterers' ledgers to bring to life a history so taken for granted that it was rarely put into words.

For the first time, quite ordinary middling people saw their interiors as an expression of personality. Your character, your education, morals, even the state of your marriage could all be judged from look of your home. Would your front room stand up to scrutiny? Would your choices cut the mustard?All things must be examined, debated and investigated (Diderot): Developing Critical Perceptions of the 18th Century.