Where Queen Elizabeth Slept & What the Butler Saw: Historical Terms from the Sixteenth Century to the Present

Who was a tweenie? How did an ice house work and where would you find a crinkum-crankum wall? What was a chesterfield for, or a Claude glass, and how did a clock jack improve your dinner? The answers to these and many other questions appear in this dictionary, which is a feast of information and trivia for history buffs everywhere wanting to know more than just dates and dry facts. They want to know how people lived: what they ate, how they spoke, how they dressed, what games they played, what their homes looked like. This unique dictionary reveals the fascinating details of life, allowing the reader to travel back in time and experience a typical day in any century from the sixteenth to our own. A book to give hours of pleasure whether browsed through or used for reference-it contains a wealth of unexpected information.

David N. Durant, the author of several historical studies and biographies, lectures in Britain and the United States on British social and architectural history. He lives in Nottinghamshire.