Who am I?

My name is Frank Pennycook and I write about history.

About this blog

The posts here are my notes on sources I am reading, with some of my own rather impromptu commentary. They are here as much as anything to help me organise references I have come across, in a way that's easy to link to from something I may write elsewhere. As such, in this raw form, it's as if I'm writing my footnotes first. They may or may not be of interest to any other readers. At the moment, I'm reading mostly about the 17th and 18th centuries as background to my Substack series (below). But I've also put up a couple of posts connected with ancient mathematics and cosmology, and some other things. I hope to pursue further topics in due course.

Background

My earlier background was in science and mathematics, but I've always had interests in history and philosophy as well.

Diamond Pitt

My current series is Diamond Pitt. There I'm following the life story of one rather notorious merchant adventurer who made several fortunes in India and sensibly used the proceeds to launch his family to the top of British politics. The period of Thomas Pitt's life, roughly 1650 to 1730, brought rapid social and economic change to Europe as its contacts with the wider world continued to extend and deepen.