Mathew Lyons on Muck Rack

Mathew Lyons

London
As seen in: Yahoo Life, Color Research & Application, Financial Times, The Telegraph, Frontline Gastroenterology, Gut Journal, Substack, Live Science, Yahoo, The Daily Telegraph and
Writer, historian, FRHistS. Recent: @HistoryToday, @EngelsbergIdeas, @spectator, @FoxedQuarterly. Books: The Favourite, Impossible Journeys, There & Back Again
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Articles

The Affair of the Diamond Necklace

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By Mathew Lyons
| History Today Verified
The necklace didn’t have a name. People described it as ‘en esclavage’ – a slave necklace – for the way its triple rows of diamonds, 647 of them, hung like chains around the neck. It didn’t have an owner, either. Its creator, Charles Auguste Boehmer, court jeweller to Louis XVI, made it expecting a royal sale. Worth two million francs, only royalty could afford it. But Marie Antoinette wasn’t buying. ‘We have more need for ships than diamonds’, she said. Desperate, Boehmer lowered the price.
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The First Venice Biennale

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By Mathew Lyons
| History Today Verified
The art world was in ferment in the late 19th century. In Paris and Vienna radical ideas were everywhere. But in the newly founded kingdom of Italy things were different. ‘Who ever in Italy spoke or wrote about any type of artistic venture was tolling a death bell’, the young art critic Ugo Ojetti said. True, there had been a successful one-off exhibition in Venice in 1887.
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End of the Pastry War

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By Mathew Lyons
| buff.ly
The plebeian riot of December 1828 swept like ‘a voracious fire’ through the Parian, a luxury goods emporium in Mexico City’s central square, the city’s governor said. In quelling the violence, soldiers destroyed the premises of a French patissier, causing 1,000 pesos worth of damage. The dispute escalated. Ten years later a French fleet arrived to blockade Mexico’s Gulf Coast ports; they demanded 600,000 pesos in restitution. It became known as the Guerra de los Pasteles, the Pastry War.
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