Not a patch on our own Dear Mary

As Dear Mary so wittily demonstrates, our need for advice is perennial. But fashions change. Mary would probably take issue with The Handbook of the Toilette (1839), which advises that one should take a weekly bath whether one needs to or not, and also with the recommendation of Cassell’s Home Encyclopedia (1934) that ‘bloater cream’ makes excellent cocktail canapés. She would surely concur, though, with an observation from All About Etiquette (1879) that ‘a social party is not intended as a school for reform, or a pulpit to denounce sin’.

To compile How to Skin a Lion Claire Cock-Starkey has consulted the British Library. She promises ‘medieval manuscripts’, but her selection is mostly from Victorian sources. She has resisted the temptation to write a history of advice and self-help, which would have made for a much longer and more interesting work. Instead she has produced an intermittently entertaining, relentlessly random and occasionally useful toilet book.