I am reading a 1943 edition of Britain against Napoleon by Caroloa Oman for which: The author desires to record her most grateful thanks to the maker of the Index - Georgette Heyer.
The opening paragraph is: "A country correspondent wrote from the south of England that filberts were in bloom, and under a shelered bank he had found primroses, though ragged and beaten by the weather. The throstle had sung a little at differenttimes."
Carola Oman, daughter of historian Carol Oman, know her history, which she intersperses with annecdotes and sippets. For example: "A short, stout lady, seated to an unappeteizing meal with a pale child, in lodgings close to the Marischal College (Aberdeen), had no need to invest in fresh black (to mourn Louis VIII) Mrs John Byron, whose temper was the terror of her landlady, already wore widow's weeds.
".... Her sole interest nowadays was her son....She had a taste for books. George Gordon the child seated opposite her in a by-street of the Granite City on this gloomy winter's afternoon, had been so christened in memory of his maternal gandfather, a descendant of the poet King James I of Scotland.
"If Mr Pitt was to declare in the House of Commons on Tuesday that Britain was at war with France....even if the war went on for years, it could not hurt Mrs Byron, her only son could never go to a war, because he was a cripple." His right foot and leg were contracted by infant paralysis.
