Tabitha Stanmore

Aug 6, 2024 | fivebooks.com | Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones |Catherine Fletcher |Roger Crowley |Tabitha Stanmore

Where I live, it’s now high summer. I’m always aware that my book choices reflect my personal interests, but that’s perhaps even more true than usual. These are books that have been published in the UK since April and I’ve gravitated towards reading over the holidays. Apologies in advance for all the excellent books I’ve missed out. One of my favourite places to be is the ancient world and judging from the number of books published about it, I’m not the only one.

Aug 1, 2024 | literaryreview.co.uk | Tabitha Stanmore

Sometime in 1492 in Whitstable, a woman named Alice Breede went to visit a local soothsayer. She wanted assurance about the sort of life that her young child could expect, the kind of comfort any parent might seek, even today, never mind in an age of high infant mortality. What she learned, however, was no comfort at all. It could hardly have been worse, in fact. The soothsayer told Alice that her child would be hanged. It’s not hard to imagine Alice’s state of mind when she returned home.

Jun 4, 2024 | lithub.com | Tabitha Stanmore

As with get-rich-quick schemes, astrology could be turned to for those seeking to get ahead. While capturing the power of stellar rays in magic rings was still largely experimental throughout the medieval and early modern periods, many people felt on much firmer ground when using astrology to predict the future. At its simplest, astrological fortune-telling involved observing the heavens and interpreting the unusual phenomena that appeared in the sky.

Jun 4, 2024 | newsbreak.com | Tabitha Stanmore

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Jun 3, 2024 | washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com | Tabitha Stanmore

When I was a child in Amarillo, Texas, in the 1960s and 70s, people came to my mother when they wanted a wart removed. Some of these folks I knew. Others were outside our circle, having been referred by friends. Mama would take the petitioner into the back yard and ask him for a penny. It had to be copper, she would explain, and it had to be one the petitioner had on him, not something contributed by a bystander.