ConnyRaSk wrote:The one that comes when you don't want to be pregnant.

No no, Conny. It's the very last one of all that will be your favourite.......

and.... sorry i was




but a more serious and on topic reply: I enjoy reading about Vikings, so what period would that be?

ConnyRaSk wrote:but a more serious and on topic reply: I enjoy reading about Vikings, so what period would that be?

Viking Age? Just sayin...

Gah!

Forgot about the Age of Sail in and around the Napoleonic Wars...

What? We were only supposed to pick ONE...?

Now ya tell me.

I have a thing for circa 1500, you got:

Leonardo da Vinci
Machiavelli
Michelangelo
House of Medici
The Borgias god what a gift, and one a pope!
I'm missing some crap....

crank wrote:
Machiavelli

I bought Il Principe some days ago. Can't wait to read it...

The two periods I am most interested are Tudor/Stuart English history and World War 2

Late Victorian, about 1870s to 1900. But only if I could be a middle-class Victorian, and not a pleb, because life was utter shit for them.

I would read esoteric literature and write pithy letters concerning the clergy. I would have a gentleman's flat, and carefully contrive a faintly libertine personality. I would cultivate a handsome moustache, and hope to go down in history as the man who invented both the 'Boston Stroker' and the 'Gordon Ballyhoo'. I would join a gentleman's club with a bizarre and highly-sexist credo. My bookcase would be large and leather-bound.

I actually do have a smoking jacket, though I'm having to let it air for a few months because it seems to have got a bit mildewy. I have yet to acquire any etchings or daguerrotypes relating to the tropics, however.

The periods that interest me are:

- Ancient Rome
- Europe c. 1100-1500
- 1914-1945

Conny's and DoubtDispelled's replies were right on the nail ( ladies) but in historical terms, it depends whether you're asking about politics, literature, human development... and geographically as well.

So I'll make like a bloke and say the future, I think.

That's a tough one. The area that most fascinates me is the neolithic, largely because so little is known. I also have a penchant for British history of various periods, namely Tudor through protectorate and restoration, Norman invasion, socio-economic effects of the plague, history of the union, etc. I'm also a major sucker for ecclesiastical history, and spend most of my leisure time investigating old abbeys and churches. More mechanical history than theological.

TBH, I haven't read much history for a couple of years, as I've been tied up with brushing up on science. I still have a few holes in that regard, particularly chemistry, so I won't be getting back to history any time soon.

If you history lovers would like to read my two Ancient History threads, I've done summarising Greek and Roman history. I'd love to get some comments on it. Most is taken from memory and my own essays and study notes, and my University notes, so it's all mixed up sources, so please read it for me. Thank you.

I've always been inordinately fond of the French Revolution. And it's not even that I approve wholeheartedly of the Revolution or anything, just that I think it's such a rich period for ideas and stories.

Really, any period that I've looked into in some depth has been fascinating. There was this marvelous exchange between Einstein and Eddington (that I wrote an essay about in university) that has now been made into a good but somewhat ahistorical made-for-tv-movie starring David Tennant and Andy Serkis (epic, I know).

I've always been casually interested in the Medieval Europe but it hasn't really got me yet, although Arkenaten is quite interesting.

The most interesting period to me is from the beginning of European colonialism to the present. I find it interesting because of the mass migrations that created the present ethnic diversity of places like Malaysia, Mauritius, Fiji, the US, Brazil, Chile and other former colonies, as well as the continuing globalization originating in this period. It was really in this period that different human 'races' (such as Europeans, Indians, East Asians and American peoples*) really had widespread contact and were living in the same parts of the world, and so my interest in ethnic, linguistic and national groups also plays into the reason for my interest in this period.

To me this is highlighted in British Malaya - where the rulers were European, the indigenous people were Malay, and there were also substantial Indian and Chinese populations; as well as the Americas where there were the dominant Europeans, the indigenous peoples, the Sub-Saharan Africans and smaller populations of East Asians, Indians and Middle Easterners - and the sheer diversity of each of these groups was also amazing (Europeans were English, Castilian, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian, [arguably] Jewish, Galician, Basque and French; Africans were Yoruba, Kongo, Ewe, Mbundu, Igbo, Mande, and so on).

Not that I'd want to live anytime before 1994 (when I was born), though.

*The indigenous ones, I mean.

heyjude wrote:I find all those ancient histories fascinating... before we went backwards as a species in the dark ages. I sort of switch off a bit with that stuff.

Yeah, if Western Europeans count as a "species". The rest of the world (including the Islamic world, China, India and Eastern Europe) certainly did not "go backwards" during this period.

Saim wrote:The most interesting period to me is from the beginning of European colonialism to the present.

I'm with Saim on this, although my focus is more on Africa.

I began reading up on that because I needed some background for my research and translation of West African writers, and I chose those mostly because they were the least known in my country and I wanted to know more (and get other people to know more, too).

One of the topics I'd love to know more about is the history of pre-Christian Europe, I mean outside the Roman Empire. Don't ask me why, probably because I know next to nothing about it - that's always a good reason to learn

Yeah, if Western Europeans count as a "species".

katja z wrote:

Saim wrote:The most interesting period to me is from the beginning of European colonialism to the present.

I'm with Saim on this, although my focus is more on Africa.

I began reading up on that because I needed some background for my research and translation of West African writers, and I chose those mostly because they were the least known in my country and I wanted to know more (and get other people to know more, too).

One of the topics I'd love to know more about is the history of pre-Christian Europe, I mean outside the Roman Empire. Don't ask me why, probably because I know next to nothing about it - that's always a good reason to learn

Yeah, if Western Europeans count as a "species".

The history of pre-Christian Europe is pretty much wrapped up with the Roman history and Greek, there is mythology though, For instance I have a whole piece written by a very interesting Finn about Finnish mythology.

1900s to 1950s but I have a special interest in the 1930s and 40s and the whole period of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and the Second World War. What happened in that period was horrific but there are some really interesting stories. Sophie Scholl and Anne Frank in particular are really inspirational for me.
I've always been interested in this period in history from a young age its just so fascinating.

My favourite is antiquity, especially Roman Empire(s) from Julius Caesar to Justinian.

Ancient China.