She works with a wide range of museums and other academic institutions exploring the past of ordinary people and their activities. Moving through the rhythm of the day, from waking up to the sound of a knocker-upper man poking a stick at your window, to retiring for nocturnal activities, when the door finally closes on twenty four hours of life, this astonishing guide illuminates the overlapping worlds of health, sex, fashion, food, school, work and play.If you liked A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England or 1000 Years of Annoying the French, you will love this book.Ruth Goodman is an independent scholar and historian, specialising in social and domestic history. It is one told from the inside out - how our forebears interacted with the practicalities of their world - and it is a history of those things that make up the day-to-day reality of life, matters so small and seemingly mundane that people scarcely mention them in their diaries or letters.

How To Be A Victorian by Ruth Goodman is a radical new approach to history a journey back in time more intimate, personal and physical than anything before. But what was it like for a commoner like you or me? How did it feel to cook with coal and wash with tea leaves? Drink beer for breakfast and clean your teeth with cuttlefish? Dress in whalebone and feed opium to the baby? Catch the omnibus to work and do the laundry in your corset? Surviving everyday life came down to the gritty details, the small necessities and tricks of living. We know what life was like for Victoria and Albert. How to be a Victorian - travel back in time with the BBC's Ruth Goodman Step into the skin of your ancestors.

How to be a victorian by ruth goodman