Sarah Drew

@sarah-drew.com

494 Followers 333 Following

Writing about romance & red tape in 1819. Unbalanced accountant, voracious reader, few fixed opinions, slightly Scottish. https://sarah-drew.com Amazing cover art ©www.claremelinsky.co.uk

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Image is a screenshot of a Twitter post by user @dondawastaken on 26 May 2026. It reads: Never forget that you are the main data center. Drink water, and consume as much literature as possible.
Black & white photo of Maxim Emelyanychev from the SCO website. He's in his 30s, with a lot of floppy hair, and is sitting leaning out at the camera as if he were just about to talk.
Pyramid showing layers of society. At the top, a money-bag named Capitalism; below that, two prosperous men and a king—"We Rule You". Under them, three prelates—Catholic (I think), Protestant & Orthodox—"We Fool You". Below them, soldiers "We Shoot at You", and underneath a dining tabel with convivial (drunk?) members of high society—"We Eat For You". At the bottom, holding up all the preceding layers, a mass of working men, women & children-"We Feed All".
Image shows Jack McConnel, Labour candidate for Galloway and West Dumfries. He is grinning as he tries to catch his dog and hold on to his leaflets and poster. He is 30s, wearing jeans, checked shirt and spectacles.
The moment Artemis II splashed down, with three red and white striped parachutes fully deployed.
image is taken from a webchat with HM Revenue & Customs. It reads "We have received your appeal for your late aunts late filing penalty. Her case is being dealt with by the bereavement team. We are unable to deal with your query over webchat. We are currently processing requests received on 18 June 2025. You can expect a reply by 9 October 2026."
Painting showing well-dressed gentlemen on the ice of a small lake. One of them is pushing a lady on a chair across the ice. Dogs and onlookers on the bank. By Diana Sperling, 1817, from "Mrs Hurst Dancing".
A dog sits working its tail in front of a stick. A genie is looking at him and saying, "I mean, I can throw it a third time."
Image shows a comparison of Wordle scores. I guessed the word in two goes; the Wordle bot got it in one.
The image shows a Wordle grid. The last entry is the word ENDED. The Wordle bot has assigned it a Skill score of 0/100 and commented "Although your guess eliminated seven words, I think EMBED was far more likely to be the solution."
marine flag for the letter K, half yellow, half black, with the meaning "I have something to communicate". The K has been amended to OK
The image shows a White young man in a tartan shirt and tortoiseshell glasses standing on top of a moorland hill. Behind him stretch the hills of Dumfries and Galloway.
A very large carefully clipped conifer ~20 feet high outside a suburban house. The conifer has grown up round a street lamppost, which just pokes out of the top of it, looking like a submarine periscope.
Tiny plastic pots of saffron
Image of a car dashboard. The milometer reads 99,999 miles.
The Elopement of Bessie Surteens and John Scott (later Lord Eldon). Etching from original painting by Wilson Hepple. From https://hauntedpalaceblog.com/2024/05/31/rags-to-riches-the-elopement-of-bessie-surtees-and-john-scott-a-newcastle-love-story/ A couple in C18th dress are rushing away from a ladder that leads to a townhouse's first floor (2nd floor for USA) window. In the background a carriage is waiting, presumably to carry the couple to Gretna Green. A man on the left of the picture is gesturing at or to them.
A well dressed early C19th gentleman (Mr Knightley) with his head bent and his hands clasped behind his back is walking away from a farmer on a horse. The farmer (William Larkins) looks after Mr Knightley bemusedly. The picture illustrates this extract from Chapter 15. " Of their all removing to Donwell, Emma had already had her own passing thoughts. Like him, she had tried the scheme and rejected it; but such an alternative as this had not occurred to her. She was sensible of all the affection it evinced. She felt that, in quitting Donwell, he must be sacrificing a great deal of independence of hours and habits; that in living constantly with her father, and in no house of his own, there would be much, very much, to be borne with. She promised to think of it, and advised him to think of it more; but he was fully convinced, that no reflection could alter his wishes or his opinion on the subject. He had given it, he could assure her, very long and calm consideration; he had been walking away from William Larkins the whole morning, to have his thoughts to himself. “Ah! there is one difficulty unprovided for,” cried Emma. “I am sure William Larkins will not like it. You must get his consent before you ask mine.”
Title page of Mrs Gaskell's Cranford, illustrated by TH Robinson. Below the title, an elderly C18th gentleman slouches reading in a great armchair, his feet on a footstool in front of the fire.
Image from a newsletter reads — Breaking the Silence: ICAS Research on Menstruation, Menopause and Miscarriage in Accounting Discover why women can feel isolated and fearful of being open about menstruation, menopause and miscarriage and often make career decisions based on these experiences.
Snapshot of the Vienna Opera's list of events for April 2026 showing Wozzeck scheduled almost every night.
Painting of Sir Gregory Page-Turner in 1768, by Pompeo Batoni, He is wearing a long red coat, red waistcoat and breeches. In the background is a bust of ?Athene and a ruined /abbey. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pompeo_Batoni_-_Sir_Gregory_Page-Turner_-_WGA1508.jpg
A night scene with a large well-built bonfire burning away merrily. The flames have not yet reached the stuffed guy on top.
Illustration by the amazing Chaya Prabhat - https://chaayaprabhat.com/ozymandias - with permission. The image has a semi-realistic, semi-abstract background in yellows, ambers, oranges of a desert with a huge golden sun. In the foreground, in dark brown, a tilted plinth, with two legs only remaining of a statue above. On the plinth are the first words of Shelley's Ozymandias— "I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. "
A blank spreadsheet
Count Rodolfo (Alexander Vinogradov) holds a limp Amina (Nadine Sierra) in Bellini's 'La Sonnambula' from the Metropolitan Opera House. Image is a still from the live screening trailer.
Cover of the first edition of Leave It to Psmith. Silhouette of an elegantly dressed woman, wearing a large elaborate hat. It is raining. A man in morning dress, wearing spats, is walking towards her, holding out an umbrella.
Taking a bow after the concert (l-r) — accordionist Samuele Telari, Nicola Benedetti, cellist Su-a Lee & guitarist Plínio Fernandes.
Image is a delft-blue outline of a vaguely tea-pot shaped thing, with "Russell" filling the middle of the image. From the Wikipedia site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot Image by Conquistador, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36974068, colour changed from black to blue by me.
B&W photo of my aunt, a tall well-built woman, with short waving iron grey hair, killer glasses and a highly patterned dress. She's standing in front of a brick wall, and holding a pair of maracas, though she could never remember when the photo was taken or why maracas.
Image shows the back-cover of the book, with the following text: Step 1—The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (Your Prose) Go a week without writing: • very • rather • really • quite • in fact It's hard, right? But if you can last a week, you will be a considerably better writer than when you started. Whether you write emails, blogs, books, or more emails, this witty and enlightening guide to writing is here to help. Written by Benjamin Dreyer, chief copy editor of the prestigious book publisher Random House and one of Twitter's leading language gurus, your sentences might never be the same again.* [Endorsements from authors and newspapers.] * See page 94 for what's wrong with this sentence.
Spike Milligan, sitting in a great armchair at a crowded desk, wearing a smoking jacket and embroidered fez. From https://mbc1955.wordpress.com/2025/05/10/sitcoms-of-the-sixties-the-world-of-beachcomber/beachcomber/
In a tall panelled room, a young woman in a blue (faintly mediaeval) dress and green fringed shawl looks out of a leaded woman with a patient, slightly apprehensive expression. William Ladd Taylor, Awaiting his return. Source: Sotheby’s/ Private Collection. https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/best-waiting-paintings/
Full list of items— acorns, alcohol wipes, animal crackers, animal or human teeth, bandages, batteries, beads, bells, belt clips, bent coins, bolts, bottle caps, broken glass, bullets, buttons, candy, candy wrappers, cardboard, cat litter, chains, clay, commemorative coins, confetti, contact lenses, cotton balls, cotton swabs, crayons, cuff links, damaged coins, dirt, dirty coins, dog food, drill bits, ear plugs, earthworms, Eisenhower silver dollars, erasers, feathers, finger nails, flash drives, foam objects, foreign coins, fossils, french fries, fruit snacks, glitter, gold fish, grass, guitar picks, gum , gum wrappers, gummy worms/bears, hair clips, hay, jar lids, jewelry, key chains, keys, lint, marbles, matches, miniature dice, mints, mud, nails, name tags, nuts/bolts, paper clips, pen caps, pencils, pills, pine cone parts, pins, pipe cleaners, Play-Doh, playing cards, POGs, pop can tabs, popsicle sticks, quilt squares, ribbons, rocks, rubber bands, rubber lid seals, sand, screw driver bits, screws, SD cards, seeds, shells, soap, soda, springs, stickers, tape, tie tacks, tire caps, tissues, tokens, tooth picks, tree bark, twigs/sticks, vegetables, wall hooks, washers, watch bands, wheat, wires, yarn
Photograph by Christopher Ison for English Heritage. Gilded porcelain vase with a painting of Wellington leading his troops into battle at Waterloo.
An evening sky with high clouds and below an apple tree's branches reaching upwards.
Ordnance Survey one inch Fifth Edition, Ellis Martin, 1933 for Reading & Newbury. Red background, buff foreground; map image shows a young man, with rolled up sleeves & a backpack, sitting at the top of a hill. In the distance can be seen a railway bridge, a town & church spire, distant hills and the sea. Image from Wikipedia & in the public domain.
Still from the film "Flying Down to Rio", showing a bevy of beautiful girls sitting on the wings of an old plane, which is revving up to take off. Taken from https://pureentertainmentpreservationsociety.wordpress.com/2017/07/13/breening-thursdays-3-flying-down-to-rio-from-1933/
Screenshot from "The Bluesky Sictionary" site, headed up Words We Haven't Seen. Among the columns of abstruse words nestles the word "a".
B&W photo of a 1966 production of Rigoletto from the Met Opera. https://www.metopera.org/user-information/nightly-met-opera-streams/articles/giant-among-giant/ The jester Rigoletto (Cornell MacNeil), portrayed here as a hunchback, limps in front of the Duke (Alfredo Kraus) & his courtiers, who mock him. At a guess, this is the scene where Rigoletto is devastated that the courtiers have kidnapped his beloved daughter from his house and delivered her to the amoral Duke, that he may have his wicked way with her.
An outdoor scene with a stage with a Tudor house front. Behind a large sandstone church.
Cover image is of forensic pathologist Sir Sydney Smith's Autobiography, Mostly Murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mostly_Murder “The[se three bones] are the bones of a young woman,” I reported. “She was short and slim. Aged between twenty-three and twenty-five when she died, which was at least three months ago. She had probably had at least one pregnancy, perhaps more. Her left leg was shorter than her right, and she walked with a pronounced limp. Probably she had polio when a child. She was killed by a shotgun loaded with home-made slugs, fired in an upward direction from a range of about three yards. The killer was standing, or sitting, in front of her, and slightly to her left. She was not killed outright, but died about seven to ten days later, probably from septic peritonitis due to the shooting.”
Garden Tiger Arctia caja (Linnaeus, 1758) Wingspan 45-65 mm. Another species which was a favourite with early collectors, who selectively bred it to create unusual colours and forms. Once a quite common moth in most of Britain, it seems to have declined in many places in the last few years. It flies in July and August, and will regularly visit the light-trap. The caterpillars are the 'woolly bears' of many people's childhood, and feed on a number of herbaceous plants. https://www.ukmoths.org.uk/species/arctia-caja/adult/
Poplar Hawk-moth Laothoe populi (Linnaeus, 1758) Wingspan 65-90 mm. Probably the commonest of our hawk-moths, it has a strange attitude when at rest, with the hindwings held forward of the forewings, and the abdomen curved upwards at the rear. If disturbed it can flash the hindwings, which have a contrasting rufous patch, normally hidden. Distributed commonly throughout most of Britain, the adults are on the wing from May to July, when it is a frequent visitor to light. The larvae feed on poplar (Populus), aspen (P. tremula) and sallow (Salix). https://www.ukmoths.org.uk/species/laothoe-populi/adult/
Peach Blossom Thyatira batis (Linnaeus, 1758) Wingspan 32-38 mm. A beautifully-marked moth, with its pinkish blotches against a soft brown background, the Peach Blossom is fairly common in woodland habitats throughout Britain except the extreme north. The reddish-brown caterpillar feeds on bramble (Rubus) in late summer. The adults fly at night in June and July, and can be attracted by bright lights or a sugar-mixture. https://www.ukmoths.org.uk/species/thyatira-batis/
Image shows the top right-hand portion of a white envelope with the words "Delivered by Royal Mail", the date, the cost (84p) and "2 letter" in place of a stamp.
Image shows a piano and piano stool against a glass window in the station with railway tracks in the background.
Hand holding a small golden pen which is no more than four inches long. In the background another fountain pen — this one green.
Print from https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1867-0511-85 More context on site. Vansittart stands with many documents under his crooked right arm.. Under his left arm are many books inscribed 'Bible'. He wears his Chancellor of the Exchequer's gown, & in his left hand is a scroll inscribed 'Bible Tea—& Lottery Puffs for Ready Money only'. He is addressed by a lean quaker (left) and by a plump lottery contractor (right). He looks to the left, with a worried frown, extending his right palm in a deprecatory gesture. The quaker is saying: "Now do's'nt thee think the Sin of Hypocrisy is the greatest of all Sin, why thee pretendeth to be Religious by Recommendation, & by Law, thee establisheth a system of Vice, fraud, & even of Death itself, by Lottery gambling, & that full of deception, & Chicanery, thee sayest I do it not, no verily, but thou havest others to do it for thee." Vansittart: "It is truely astonishing, what a quantity of Vice I can create for so little Money, I care not for the Immorality of the thing, if lean but get the Money!" The lottery contractor: "Well done my Religious deceiver, never mind what that fellow says, we will do the dirty Work for you, so long as we are allowed by Law to make up the Lotteries our own way, and so artfully blind & deceive the People, as to make our £400,000 a Year by them, while you the Propagator of the Vice, only make £300,000, we make money enough to open Tea Shops,...& to gull the Public, in a hundred different ways beside." Papers hang from his coat-pocket: 'Scheme for a New Lottery Puff'; 'Tea and Puff'; 'Genuine Tea Puff'. At his feet: 'Tea without Sugar'. After the title: 'Now with Religious Zeal the Poor with Bible Crams, Then with false Lottery Puffs, the Poor he tempts & Damns. Querie, is not this a Subject for the Society for the Suppression of Vice? no,— they never meddle with the Vices of the great, but only punnish the little for immitating them.' 15 May 1819 Hand-coloured etching
The b&w film era comedy pair, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, are trying to carry a piano across a rickety wooden bridge over a gorge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susanna_Whatman#/media/File:Portrait_of_Mrs_Susannah_Whatman_(1756-1828),_n%C3%A9e_Bosanquet.jpg Portrait of Mrs Susanna Whatman (1756-1828), née Bosanquet, half-length, in a painted oval. In an oval, directed to left, looking at the spectator, nearly full-face; light-brown shot-silk dress cut low; hair powdered, bound with light ribbon. Admired for her poise and beauty, twenty-three year old Susanna Bosanquet married James Whatman (1741-1798) in 1776. Susanna’s father, Jacob Bosanquet, was a Director of the East India Company before his death in 1767. James Whatman's father, James Whatman the Elder (1702-1759), began a paper mill in Kent that revolutionized the papermaking process in England. James Whatman furthered his father's innovations of producing fine paper and the business's technology and methods for processing paper pulp are still used in mass production. Susanna Whatman was James Whatman’s second wife, after his first wife Sarah (née Stanley) had died leaving him with two young daughters. By all accounts, his marriage to Susanna was a happy one, and in 1778 Whatman commissioned a portrait of his wife from George Romney. According to Romney's account books, Mrs. Whatman sat for the artist seventeen times between 1778 and 1782. Susanna Whatman ran the household at Turkey Court, near Maidstone, and later at Vintners at Boxley in Kent; during the course of her life she wrote meticulous notes on how best to manage a household and preserve furniture, china, and the house in general. She turned the formidable instructions into a manuscript, which was passed down in her family until it was published in 1952 as "Susanna Whatman, her housekeeping book", and later declared a National Trust Classic in 1987.
Image shows title page of book & reads as follows: THE BLACK BOOK OR CORRUPTION UNMASKED ! being an account of places, pensions, and sinecures, the revenues of the clergy and landed aristocracy; the Salaries and Emoluments in Courts of Justice and the Police Department ; the expenditure of the civil list; the amount and application of the droits of the Crown And Admiralty; The Robbery of Charitable Foundations; The Profits of the Bank of England, arising from the Issue of its Notes, Balances of Public Money, Management of the Borough Debt, and other Sources of Emolument; the debt, revenue, and influence of the East-India Company; the state of the finances, debt, and Sinking-Fund. TO WHICH IS ADDED, Correct Lists of both Houses of Parliamen ; showing their Family Connections, Parliamentary Influence, the Places and Pensions held by themselves or Relations; distinguishing also those who voted against Catholic Emancipation, and for the Seditious Meeting and Press-Restriction Bills: the whole forming a complete Exposition of the cost, influence, patronage, and corruption of the Borough Government. London : Printed and Published by John Fairburn , 2, Broadway, Ludgate-Hill. 1820.
It was a day peculiar to this piece of the planet, when larks rose on long thin strings of singing and the air shifted with the shimmer of actual angels. Greenness entered the body. The grasses shivered with presences, and sunlight stayed like a halo on hair and heather and hills. Walking into town, I saw, in a radiant raincoat, the woman from the fish-shop. ‘What a day it is!’ cried I, like a sunstruck madman. And what did she have to say for it? Her brow grew bleak, her ancestors raged in their graves as she spoke with their ancient misery: ‘We’ll pay for it, we’ll pay for it, we’ll pay for it!’
By Albin Grau - https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nosferatu-vampire-exhibition, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77433009 An elongated charcoal vampire straddles a dark grey background, while rats leap between his legs in the foreground. The word NOSFERATU is strung out across the picture.
The London-Edinburgh Royal Mail coach setting a brisk pace on a summer day (1821) James Pollard (English, 1792-1867) Four matched bay horses, their coats gleaming, pull a mail coach donw out in black, with burgundy doors. Two men sit on the coachman's seat, two more sit on the roof, and a red-coated man stands on the back. All men wear top hats.
A small bunch of enormous black grapes, each one the size of a plum. My finger is dwarfed by them.
Book cover for "The murderer" by Simenon. Against a grass-green background, there's a black and white, slightly fuzzy, picture of a man's face. The contrast has been stepped up, so it's mainly highlights and shadow, with little fine detail. The picture appears to have been torn in four diagonally, but the top portion (that would have shown the forehead and hair) is missing.
An oil painting of an arched stone bridge over a fast-flowing burn / small river. Heavy grey clouds mass over hills in the distance. Although the trees in the mid & fore-ground are still in leaf, the bracken has begun to change colour to golden brown. Image courtesy of the Harbour Cottage Gallery & on loan to Kirkcudbright Galleries.
At the opera. On stage, a woman is singing, while behind her a masked & cloaked figure in black is poised to stab her with a dagger. Watching the action on stage, a middle aged man asks his companion crossly, "What's he waiting for?" Cartoon in the New Yorker 17 Jan 1953 by "Bailey".