Captain Marryat News Today

For the great novelist, art, entertainment, and moral purpose were one.

Sailors Beware

I’m not sure that my Greek grandchildren know the word antediluvian or whether they have heard of Methuselah, but they certainly consider me an ancient relic who occasionally tells tall tales and true from the legendary past, and from another land. Of course they are unable to conceive of life or domestic space without screens: even my youngest grandchild, who has just had her first birthday, knows when a Skype call is imminent, and coos accordingly. By Gillian Bouras

Tides of revolution and empire New histories of the Oceanic South. Historical accounts of the ‘age of revolution’ between the 18th and 19th centuries and the expansion of the British empire often neglect crucial perspectives of indigenous people in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. In this interview, Sujit Sivasundaram, Professor of World History, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, and Director of Centre of South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge, speaks to us about his latest b...

Country Life Trending: A new generation of upholstery is elegant, comfortable and doesn’t reveal too much leg, says Giles Kime. The story that the Victorians draped chair legs to protect their modesty is thought to have its roots in an anti-American quip in Captain Marryat’s A Diary In America, which he wrote in the 1830s. The anecdote reflected his view that there was a great deal of prudishness over the pond. Although the Victorians did have a curious habit of draping almost anythin...