My book has finally come out in paperback, at a price point it's actually worth and I'm not embarrassed to ask for! If you're interested in foreign war volunteering, fascism and anti-fascism, activism and solidarity movements, or just interwar Britain and Europe more generally, then it may be up your alley...

If you order direct from the publisher, you can even get an additional 30% off with the discount code PAPER30.

I'm also running a giveaway promo on Twitter if you think it sounds "interesting but not paying money levels of interesting".

I'm in a very grumpy mood and I want to grump about the idea, which I find especially common among my fellow sewing ladies, but even, I think, among historians, that this or that costume in a movie is or is not "accurate". But costumes cannot be accurate or inaccurate, because costumes are not clothes.

They really only superficially resemble clothes. Clothes communicate to the people around you, costumes communicate to the audience. Some overeducated Janeite desperate to prove that Colin Firth is the best Mr Darcy and all others are vulgar failures may claim that the costume of Lizzie Bennet in the latest adaptation would make the people around her think she's a prostitute, but no they don't think that, they can't because they don't exist, they are characters, they have no minds or opinions. They don't exist! Lizzie also doesn't exist! The costume is not communicating to her peers, it is communicating to the audience, and their reaction is the only reaction involved. If they think she looks smart and sophisticated, slightly less rich than Darcy and Bingham, sympathetic and spirited, then the costumes are doing their job, and to hell with the absolutely irrelevant mores of the 19th Century. If you put a green cockade on your character in a French Revolution movie, expecting it to convey that they support the comte d'Artois, you are a total failure as a costume designer -- it communicates nothing to the audience, despite its meaning to people of that period.

But even this indication of character is maybe not even the primary point of costumes, which is to be a visual element in the composition of images. I don't know about you, but I don't dress with the idea of harmonizing with the background, furniture, other costumes etc under certain filters, lighting, color correction etc, any more than I follow a certain path in order to hit my marks in a Spielburgian oner. To complain about costumes being "inaccurate" makes as much sense as complaining that an oil painting is "inaccurate" because, actually, real ife is 3-dimensional, and has sounds, and doesn't all smell like linseed oil. Yes, actually, people didn't wear clothes that look like these costumes; also, actually, they didn't speak English and when they did they said a "um" and "er" a lot, actually time passes linearly instead of being edited as film is, actually things are not flat projections on a cloth screen. And even the most "accurate" costume is nothing like a historical costume; it is sewn on a machine out of modern fabric, made in a completely different way from top to bottom, just as nobody in their right mind would costume a Greek tragedy by pinning someone a peplos and calling it a day instead of painstakingly sewing down every pleat, Mme Gres style, because you must have that control.

Costumes can be good or bad but the criteria never includes "accuracy", and choosing looking good on film or a 2000s hairstyle because it won't alienate the audience from your main character over "accuracy" is not a mistake or indicative of incompetence or ignorance but is exactly what they are being paid to do.

I love when even the History gets META.

I feel like in addition to "Never start a land war in Asia" and "Never invade Russia in the winter," there should be a third rule: Never assume the Americans won't mobilize in time.

That seems to have been a fatal mistake in both world wars by multiple parties.

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I have a question related to Downton Abbey.

In the late 1800s/early 1900s, would the adult heirs apparent of hereditary titles have continued to live in the main house when they were married and had children?

If the peer in question lived to an old age, the heir could be a senior with children and grandchildren of their own before they inherit the title. Would they have continued to live at the main house? What did they do with their lives while they wait to inherit?

Was there a "normal" number of children for a peer to have? Was there a preference for larger or smaller families? I presume that any male who was not the heir would have moved out and found their own livelihood when they reach adulthood and any female would leave when they're married.

Could someone walk me through how to unsubscribe from the weekly newsletter. I have tried numerous time - what exactly do I write in the reply? Maybe I am stupid but it won’t work.