TIL that bronze is non-magnetic. I really ought to know this, so it will trigger a deep dive on the magnetic properties of various metals. I have a good general knowledge, but need to discover (and retain) the details.

Why, you ask? Well 19th/early 20th Century toy trains run on early electrical knowledge and technology. Understanding how and why things were made as they were is important for preservation and restoration.

#Trains #Toys #Tinplate #20thCentury

Life, letters & low tide in Shetland: Valda and MacDiarmid

“Valda is clearly the more practical of the two. It would become apparent that without her at the helm, they were doomed.”

Shetland offered Hugh MacDiarmid solitude, but it was his wife Valda Trevlyn Grieve who kept life steady. Dr Colin McIlroy of the National Library of Scotland examines the letters of Hugh MacDiarmid & Valda Trevlyn Grieve

https://www.nls.uk/collections/stories/literature-and-poetry/valda-grieve-and-hugh-macdiarmid/

#Scottish #literature #poetry #modernism #20thcentury #Shetland

The Last Traces of the Belmont Ironstone Mine

Green “Yorkshire” fields in early spring, and nothing here looks remotely industrial. Yet the three red-brick Edwardian cottages sitting neatly in the middle distance were built for the men who ran Belmont Ironstone Mine, and the large brick building in the distance was once the stables for the horses ...

https://www.fhithich.uk/2026/03/28/the-last-traces-of-the-belmont-ironstone-mine/

#Guisborough #20thCentury #history #IronstoneMining

I wad ha’e gi’en him my lips tae kiss,
Had I been his, had I been his…

—“Mary’s Song”, by Marion Angus (1865–1946) – born #OTD, 27 March
published in THE TINKER’S ROAD and Other Verses (1924)

“She has an authentic voice straight out of the ballad tradition, an eerie shimmer to her best poems”
—Kathleen Jamie

https://digital.nls.uk/works-by-selected-scottish-authors/archive/129188342#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=12&xywh=-880%2C-256%2C3153%2C2337

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #20thcentury #womenwriters #Scots #Scotslanguage

“The life & career of the gifted Glaswegian writer Catherine Carswell was marked by such alarming & recurrent notoriety that her present obscurity is baffling”

—Emma Garman in the Paris Review on the life & work of Catherine Carswell (1879–1946)—born #OTD, 27 March

1/4

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/10/feminize-your-canon-catherine-carswell/

#Scottish #literature #modernism #20thcentury #womenwriters