A Victorian House; A Shakespearean Theatre

Upstairs Downstairs life and the rumbustiousness of Elizabethan theatre are captured well in these interesting books. An unconventional contents page leads you into a rather more conventional format. So in House the contents page is a labelled picture of the Servants' Hall with Gong, Sewing Machine, Mangle, Piano Music etc. directing us to pages beginning with the item and broadening to develop a theme. Thus 'Potty' (and what kid is not fascinated by bodily functions) starts with the potty and goes on to look at deaths from typhoid, the introduction of piped water and sewers, the flushing toilet and the introduction of factory products for cleaning and personal hygiene. All this is rounded off with the quintessentially Victorian middle class homily 'Cleanliness is next to Godliness' in one of the little pictures of open books that grace each page with an apposite quotation. Other quotes are included on the main pages and I was much entertained in Theatre to discover that King James I described smoking as 'a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs'. Good sized print and thoughtful sentence construction make these ideal for Years 6-8 (10-13 year olds).