Don’t miss the latest diary entry from the new 19th-century “blogger”.

That “Lady of Quality”, Miss Frances Williams Wynn, has a lovely tale of the honest, fresh-faced country 18-year-old, set up by an old thief and hence sent to Botany Bay. Yet even amidst the convicts, her virtue shines out, and finally, on her deathbed, the old lag tells the truth … But is it too late?

An introductory article about blogs, written from a feminist perspective – a good place to direct someone who wants to know “what’s a blog” and, the ones I seem to get asked most often “how do you find blogs?” and “how do other people find your blog”. (And not a bad place to enhance your blogroll.)

Spending yesterday at a couple of Historical Association talks (more on that later, hopefully), I was reminded that despite the prediction of 53 million blogs by the end of this year, lots of the world has never even heard the term. (Although the average age of sixty-plus was undoubtedly a factor.)

Bonus items: an interesting collection of links on blogging.

And a corporate blogger who’s trying to escape.

History is written by the victors: this is a truism that has become a cliche. Yet over three hugely influential centuries of world history – from the sixth to the 4th century BC – accounts of the Mediterranean come solely from the the little Greek states that were mere gnats on the western flank of the giant bull of the Persian empire.

The story of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamian world (and beyond) should be that of this empire, the largest by far that the world had yet known, matched across subsequent millennia only by Imperial Rome and Han China. Yet through accidents of culture, the Persians have merely walk-on parts for most students of history – on stage merely to play the nasty tyrants in the Ionian revolt, the sneaky baddies at Thermopylae and a clumsy Goliath at Salamis, as the Greek cheerleader, Herodotus, unfolds his tale.

Turn the historic lens through 180 degrees, however, and the world looks very different: “The petty squabbles, alliances and disputes of these states on the edge of the empire … were of little or no importance to either the Great Kings or the Persian Empire as a whole. The Persian ‘invasions’ of Greece in the fifth century BC were expeditions to punish specific instances of Greek interference in Asia Minor. Afterwards it was the skilful diplomacy of able satraps that maintained the stability of the Western frontier.”

Those words are from the newly opened Forgotten Empire: the World of Ancient Persia exhibition at the British Museum. The first major show on this world civilisation in London, perhaps in the West, to focus on the Persians, it aims to swing that lens, to present the conquerors in their own terms.

The show begins with a statue that amply illustrates the size and reach of the Persian empire at its height. Of Darius, who is now sadly lacking his head, it was found in Susa, although probably carved in Egypt, and around its edge the people of his empire are shown in 24 cartouche fortresses. They are Persian, Mede, Elamite, Arian, Parthian, Bactrian, Sogdian, Arachosian, Drangian, Sattogydian, Chorasmian, Sakan, Babylonian, Armenian, Lydian, Cappadocian, Skudrian, Assyrian, Arabian, Egyptian, Libyan, Nubian, Makan and (No, I’ve never heard of a third of those either.)

Next is a room lined with spectacular casts from Persepolis, the Persians’ great palace that was vandalously destroyed by Alexander. Made in 1892, they now preserve details lost in the originals. It’s an understandable decision – these large panels of processing figures are spectacular, but they have that curiously flatness of fascimile that is impossible to overcome. What really demands attention are smaller carvings, often only fragments, polished still, so many centuries after their creation, to a metallic gleam. The descendants of the wonderful Assyrian bulls next door, this is an art at its zenith – generations of craftsmen have studied the human and animal form until the bend of a bull’s knee, the curve of a man’s eyebrow, are perfectly understood.

Then it is on to eating and drinking, from spectacular gold and silver rhytons (drinking horns), to silver and glass dishes that would, we’re told, have held meals of tastes still recognisable Persian today – one dinner was of sweet grape jelly, candied turnips, capers and radishes with salt, and pistachio nuts.

The sweep of life is completed in the next room, where spectacular gold jewellery, most from funerary contexts, competes with stone carving for the claim of the ultimate Persian art. One gold earring – quite possibly to be worn by a man, the carvings suggest – is a fist-sized, astonishingly intricate, assemblage of dozens of rings and spirals, set inside each other like a Russian doll. Just looking at it made my earlobes ache.

So we’ve done ceremony and royalty, we’ve done everyday life, we’ve done death. Yet there’s something missing – the Persians themselves. There’s only a few of King of Kings and a handful of satraps. No children; no women; no labouring peasants. There’s no human stories – not even myths – and no Tutenkhamen-style tombs with all their pathetic human interest.

But this, it seems, is not the fault of the curators. The Persians themselves are to blame. They were great warriors, great administrators and great diplomats. But for their place in posterity, they relied on art and wealth. Their society didn’t cultivate a Herodotus; their kings failed to ensure their tombs would not be robbed soon after their deaths. They’ve left us wonderful things, but not wonderful stories. Unless those are rediscovered, the Persians, even with this effort on their behalf, are likely to remain shadowy boogeymen.

The International Herald Tribune was not impressed, while the Telegraph liked the show, but not the staging.. The Guardian’s review of the exhibition is, however, nice about it, but nasty about the Persians, which drew an angry Iranian response. Here’s another Iranian view of the “controversy” following the opening of the exhibition.

The exhibition continues until January 8. It is, as some of these reviews note, seriously cramped. Try to pick a quiet time; on a weekday soon after the museum opens is probably a good bet.

I’ve been promising it for months, but now it is finally here, drumroll ….

Written between 1797 and 1844 by Miss Frances Williams Wynn, the daughter of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn (the fourth baronet) and Charlotte, daughter of George Grenville (First Lord of the Treasury, 1763-1765).

I’ll be posting entries on a (more or less) daily schedule. And I haven’t read ahead in detail – so I’ll be reading along with everyone else. Comments and suggestions about the text will be most welcome.

The choice, I’ll admit is somewhat random. I was looking for a women writer of the past to promote (with a text out of copyright), and this book fell into my lap. (Well I paid £30 for it, to be precise.)

The Diaries seem little known to modern scholarship, as indeed is Miss Williams Wynn herself. A search through all of the scholarly resources to which I have access, including JStor and the Royal Historical Society Bibliography produced precisely no results for her. (I’d be very interested if anyone has any more success, or indeed knows anything at all about her or can suggest likely sources.)

Pretty well all I know about her comes from the preface:

Miss Frances Williams Wynn, the lady in question, was the daughter of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn (the fourth baronet) and Charlotte, daughter of George Grenville (First Lord of the Treasury, 1763-1765). The uncles to whom she frequently alludes, were the first Marquis of Buckingham, Lord Grenville, and the Right Honourable Thomas Grenville: the brothers, the Right Honourable Charles Williams Wynn, and the Eight Honourable Sir Henry Williams Wynn (long English minister at Copenhagen).

One of her sisters was married to the late Lord Delamere, and the other to Colonel Shipley, M.P., son of the celebrated Dean of St. Asaph, and grandson of Johnson’s friend, the Bishop. Lord Braybrooke and Lord Nugent were her near relatives. She died in 1857, in her 77th or 78th year; when her papers came into the possession of her niece, the Honourable Mrs. Rowley,* under whose sanction these selections from them are published.

I was intimately acquainted with Miss Wynn during the last sixteen or seventeen years of her life, and I spoke from personal knowledge when, on a former occasion, I mentioned her as distinguished by her literary taste and acquirements, as well as highly esteemed for the uprightness of her character, the excellence of her understanding, and the kindness of her heart.

Frances gets a brief mention in this 1911 encyclopedia article about the Williams Wynn family, which seems to have been of Welsh origins and strongly Tory, with a sprinkling of Jacobite.

It seems too the Diaries were used by Lytton Strachey, in his biography of Queen Victoria.

The only substantial reference I have found in my research was a two-column review in The Times of 26 May, 1864. (Found online, but I haven’t yet been able to get a copy – will post it when I can.)

The diaries were edited by a man, and while he boasts of how little she wrote of personal matters I suspect the original, unedited version, would probably give a better sense of the writer as a person. As presented, while these are called diaries, they are often more in the nature of a commonplace book.

But they’re never dull – indeed to start off are a couple of rather gory “buried alive” and ghost stories.

And since I don’t have months to spend in the National Library of Wales (MSS 2775-88), where it looks like her papers, presumably including the original diaries, are, the edited version is the best that I can do. (It seems there are also a lot of family records in the Denbighshire Record Office.)

Ever since I’ve started doing handling at the British Museum, I’ve been thinking of buying a Paleolithic hand-axe for my very own – there’s a certain sense of perspective to be gained from handling something made tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of years ago.

And now there’s a rather lovely looking one on eBay.

But since I’m about to become an impecunious freelance writer, I’m sitting on my hands.

I’ve written before about the case of Linda Loaiza Lopez, who was abducted and held, tortured, raped and abused for FOUR MONTHS in Venezuala. The good news is that, despite the high connections of the alleged attacker – “The first trial was postponed by the justice system 29 times. Fifty nine judges have declined to hear the case” – a new trial is due to start on Monday.

Meanwhile, Barbara Ehrenreich (PDF) – I rave about one of her books here – has been diagnosed with breast cancer, and is finding the whole breast cancer “industry” worrying, from pink teddy-bears to the provision of crayons in a “care pack” for “expressing your feelings”. She says:

“The infantilizing trope is perplexing. Certainly men diagnosed with prostrate cancer do not receive gifts of Matchbox cars.”

The article looks back to the Seventies, when feminist activisim helped to stop some radical, crippling treatments, and expresses fears today that the hugh corporate involvement in the “industry” could be harming understanding of the disease – particularly the place of environmental carcinogens in causing it.

“Breast cancer would hardly be the darling of corporate America if its complexion changed from pink to green. …

The one great truth I bring out of the breast-cancer experience, which did not, I can now report, did not make me prettier or stronger, more feminine or spiritual — only more deeply angry.”

Definitely worth reading.