Betsy, Angel of Prisons

Elizabeth Gurney, or Betsy as she was known, was born on 21 May 1780 to a wealthy family of bankers. Her father, John Gurney, was a partner in Gurney’s Bank, and her mother, Catherine Barclay, came from the family that …

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European Literature Night

15 May is European Literature Night and events are happening across the continent – check out what’s going on where you are. The  concept, according to the official European Literature Night website, is ‘One night – many experiences: public readings …

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Happy Europe Day!

Today the whole of Europe will be celebrating Europe Day and the anniversary of the ‘Schuman declaration’. Speaking in Paris in 1950, Robert Schuman (the French foreign minister) proposed a new form of political cooperation for Europe, which would make …

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Happy birthday, Tchaikovsky!

Today, we celebrate a great composer’s birthday. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on 7 May 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia. I have always loved Tchaikovsky’s ballet music. I remember dancing around to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and feeling the …

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The Book and the Bard

It’s no surprise that if you search for Shakespeare on Europeana, you get back quite a lot of results, in more than 20 languages. Shakespeare wrote, amongst other things, 38 plays and 154 sonnets. He also invented 1,700 words including …

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Lucrezia Borgia: scandalous or scandalised?

533 years ago this week, a girl was born whose life would prove to be so full of drama and scandal that it has been turned into a play by Victor Hugo, an opera by Donizetti (read the libretto, see …

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