One of our recent tweets featured an illustration of a dog playing dominos. This was taken from Dog breaking: the most expeditious, certain, and easy method: whether great excellence or only mediocrity is required by Lieutenant Colonel W.N Hutchinson, (John Murray 1850.) The image shows a dog playing dominos with its owner Monsieur Leonard surrounded by […]
Today is World book day. Some of us will remember the £1 book tokens given out at school, picking out our favourite book at the book shop and rushing home to read it– today is definitely a day for the bookworm! World book day is a celebration of illustrators, authors and, most importantly, reading. As […]
In an introductory note to Sidney Galtray’s The horse and the war Field-Marshall Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces, states: “I hope that this account … will bring home to the peoples of the British Empire … the wisdom of breeding animals for the two military virtues of hardiness and activity.” Last night’s Channel 4 […]
Thousands of events will take place around the world tomorrow to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD). This day has been observed, in one incarnation or another, for over 100 years. Today, IWD celebrates women’s achievements and looks forward to a bright, safe and equal future for women. Over the next few days the Library blog will […]
Part one of two guest blog posts from Julie Hipperson, PhD student at Imperial College London. In February 1943, the Council of the SWVS were not surprised when their attention was alerted to the fact that the Veterinary Record was carrying adverts which offered different salaries for men and women. The issue of equal pay […]
The final instalment of Julie Hipperson’s piece to mark International Women’s Day. The last post looked at how in its early days the SWVS was conflicted about adopting whole-sale the notion of equal pay for equal work based on their physical ability to do the job, an ambiguity beautifully encapsulated in an interview held with […]
Today is World Poetry Day, so to mark the occasion we have brought out one of the poetry books we have in our Historical Collection, William Somervile’s The Chace: a poem (id 15172). This was first published in 1735 and we have a copy of the fifth edition which was published in 1767. William Somervile (1675–1742), […]
“Sore backs appear inseparable from mounted service, they have existed as long as the horse has been used in war … it was reasonable to suppose … as knowledge advanced, a reduction in this class of injury should have been possible.” So says Frederick Smith in his book A veterinary history of the war in […]
Search the library catalogue for Isambard Kingdom Brunel, born on this day in 1806, and you will find one entry – for William Youatt’s book The Horse: its history, breeds, and management to which is appended, a treatise on draught first published in 1831. The link to Brunel? The inclusion of his ‘treatise on draught’ – […]
One of the things I love about working in libraries is the weird and wonderful questions you are asked and how, on occasions, information you find for one enquirer can be useful in answering another – sometimes years later. This has happened to me recently with King George IVs giraffe! In 2010 I found an […]
