By the time the story of Hansel and Gretel reached our ears it involved a witch, a candy house, and a happy ending. In the original there was murder, child abandonment, attempted cannibalism, and enslaved children. The time period of 1314 to 1322 was deemed The Great Famine in the Baltic regine, there was a famine that spread across Europe due to volcanic activity causing crop failure. It is estimated 30 million people died and 25% of the population was killed off globally. Older people chose to starve themselves to death, while some mothers abandoned or ate their children. People also often dug up graves and fed on the flesh of those who had passed. This is the reality of how the story of Hansel and Gretel was formed. The direct source for the story was Henriette Dorothea Wild who...

The Grimm brothers spent their whole lives together and naturally they died in the same place as well. Wilhelm Grimm, who had spent most of his life being ill, died of an infection in 1859, at the age of 73. Jacob Grimm became a retired recluse shortly after his brothers death and eventually died of natural causes in 1863, at age 78. He worked everyday to then end of his life and stated this in his autobiography.

"Nearly all my labors have been devoted, either directly or indirectly, to the investigation of our earlier language, poetry and laws. These studies may have appeared to many, and may still appear, useless; to me they have always seemed a noble and earnest task, definitely and inseparably connected with our common fatherland, and calculated to foster the love of it. My principle has always been in these investigations to under-value nothing, but to utilize the small for the illustration of the great, the popular tradition for the elucidation of the written monuments...

The Montagu House 

This was the site of the Montagu house, the property that acted as the first home of The British Museum’s collection. It was in this expansive mansion that John Keats and all contemporary visitors would have encountered the Elgin Marbles.  

The land upon which the estate is located was sold to Ralph Montagu, the First Duke of Montagu, in 1675. He had this home designed by Robert Hooke. Construction of the estate began in 1677, with the mansion not fully complete until 1686, after a fire destroyed the original building and...