Did you know that a pinch of cumin and aniseed in hot milk can get rid of wind? Or that onions can help you sleep? Or that almost any man will brighten up after a superlative beef stew? Or that a handkerchief dabbed with a woman's urine and delicately applied can apparently act as a marvellous aphrodisiac? If not, then you can learn all this and more from a rash of new self-help books for women which hark back to a gentler age, when women were ladies and knew how to sew.
The market for cheap and cheerful in all its forms is flourishing due to the credit crunch, and the publishing world has joined in with a nostalgia-fest. Michael O'Mara, whose company has just published Aunt Epp's Guide for Life: From Chastity to Copper Kettles, Musings of a Victorian Lady, by Elspeth Marr (1871-1947), says we are increasingly attracted to the past. "There's the wisdom of an entire culture in books like this, and it's wisdom that we've largely forgotten. They aren't relying on science or someone in a tracksuit on television to tell them how to live well."
Aunt Epp's Guide also has recipes for foolproof coq au vin, herbal remedies for hair loss, cures for piles and advice on how to get pregnant and avoid the overzealous attentions of your husband: "Keep a stale fish beneath the bed on his side. The bad smell will occupy him and keep his mind off intercourse."
Orchids on Your Budget: Live Smartly on What You Have, first published during the Depression in 1937, was written by Marjorie Hillis, who worked at Vogue for 20 years, and is a rather more demure book than Aunt Epp's. About to be republished by Virago, it is a manual for living in a chic way on very little and could almost have been written today. "A slight financial pressure sharpens the wits... it takes an interesting person to have an attractive menage on a shoestring and manage it with gaiety and charm."
She details how to take care of your clothes so that they last, and what cheap food you can get away with serving to party guests. Being a startlingly emancipated working woman herself, she also devotes a whole chapter to whether one can "afford a husband". Her only failing is that she thinks being thin is a great way to economise.
Both these books are about making the best of what you have and being good-humoured about it, but there are also a number of new ones which look back to the early 20th century on a more superficial level. How to be Adored, by Caroline Cox, is a collection of style advice from former Hollywood stars such as Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren, but focuses on spending as little as possible. Then there is How to be a Hepburn in a Hilton World, by Jordan Christy, which rather irritatingly explains how to behave decorously (dress tastefully, don't get drunk and fall over), and Barbara Cartland's re-released Etiquette Handbook from 1962, which is too hilariously complicated to possibly adhere to.
The books fit well with the current trend for all things old-fashioned – Lindy hopping or swing dancing, which dates from the 1930s, has never been so popular. Looking like you're from another era is also hugely popular – on YouTube a video explaining how to do hair in a 1940s "victory roll" has had 2.5m hits and you can even take 1920s-1950s hair and make-up classes online.
With the recession, global warming, terrorism and a general sense of impending doom, it's hardly surprising so many people are effectively pretending that they live in another era.
