More pictures and sounds ...

Julian and Anne may sound like members of the Famous Five, but they are also Ruthless Editors at Faber and Faber.  So ruthless, in fact, that they have vetoed this terrific picture from appearing in my new book Courtiers. It's a hugely significant book of letters from which certain pages have been  mysteriously cut out (will tell you why later).  But they say they don't want it because the hand in the photo (yes, it's my hand) looks dead.

The reason I like this picture of a crowded court occasion is the sense it gives of a febrile, packed, sweating crowd, with scarcely room to move or bow.  People would 'jostle and squeeze by one another', shouting 'pardon' over their shoulders, it was simply 'impossible to hold a conversation'.  Everyone laughed when Lord Onslow tumbled 'backward among all the crowd' and lay sprawling, while another gentleman, 'drunk and saucy', had to be ejected for throwing a punch.  A palace drawing room sounds like it should be genteel, but sometimes it was rather like a rowdy nightclub.

This amazing and moving object is the iron collar Peter the Wild Boy wore locked around his neck.  It looks cruel but the intention was kind: it bore his name and address so people could bring him home when he wandered off.  He once got as far as Norwich.