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Naming names. by Gillian Polack
This month, I asked the public what this post should be about. Most people wanted biographical posts, but Australian author Glenda Larke asked (on Twitter) “What is it about 19th century women named...
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Where the Living Meet the Dead: The Capuchin Monastery Catacombs - By Anna...
Once you’ve had your fill of gelato, cannoli and palazzi, you can descend from the dusty streets of Palermo into the cool of the Capuchin catacombs.There, hanging from the walls, lying on shelves,...
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Lesbia's Sparrow - Katherine Langrish
Like many a great poet, Gaius Valerius Catullus didn’t live long. Born into a wealthy family near Verona in around 84 BCE, he was dead by the age of thirty: in this short space he made his mark as a...
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The Comfort of Jeoffy - Joan Lennon
Lots of us remember where we were when the moon landing happened. Or 9/11. Or some other event of historical impact. But there are moments of personal history that are also pins in the map. One of...
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The Book of Etiquette Sheena Wilkinson
Another in my occasional series about odd little books from the past.my 1962 edition I grew up in a Belfast council estate but I knew how to address a letter to royalty and what a Dowager was. I knew...
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The David Parr House….An update. by Adèle Geras
[I'm grateful to the Trustees of the David Parr House for permission to use the photos shown in this post. They are all Copyright to the David Parr House.]On a windy evening in March, I went to hear...
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'The (Roma) Boy Who Lived' by Karen Maitland
Rounding up of Roma in Occupied Yugoslavia Between 1941-1944Two of my medieval thrillers feature dwarfs as main characters. One is a natural-born dwarf sold by their family into a brothel, the other...
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Classics Beyond Academia 2018
by Caroline Lawrence(This is the draft of a speech I delivered at the Classical Association Conference in Leicester #CA2018 on the evening of Sunday 8 April 2018)As an author of over thirty historical...
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Pale hands I loved beside the Sagredo – Michelle Lovric
My title messes with ‘Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar’, the celebrated first line of ‘Kashmiri Song’, a poem by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Nicholson) published in her collection The Garden of...
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Manuscript Mania: How Sir Thomas Phillipps built the world’s greatest...
Boccaccio, De mulieribus claris (c. 1450-70, France)Phillipps MS 2862Sir Thomas Phillipps (1792-1872) was probably the world's most prolific collector of books, artefacts, paintings, and especially...
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The atomic weight of doubt
Some years ago, I was the unlikely editor of a Science magazine. I commissioned Bill Bryson to write about the search for the Higgs Boson particle, and I tagged along with him on his research trip to...
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Destruction and Restitution - The Crown Jewels
‘I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown…’ Charles I before his execution in 1649.Anyone visiting the Tower Of London to see the magnificent display of the Crown Jewels of England would never...
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Japanese jugglers, acrobats and top spinners in Victorian London - by Lesley...
Japanese acrobats at the Paris Expo 1867When Phileas Fogg arrives in Japan, the first thing he does is to go to an ‘acrobatic performance’. There he sees the ‘butterfly trick’, where the performers...
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A lonely queen: the emotional widowhood of Queen Victoria, by Fay Bound Alberti
A lonely queenLoneliness is a 21st-century problem; an epidemic of global proportions, linked variously to heart problems, mental health crises and dementia among the old. We are social animals,...
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Jack Fortune and the British Empire - by Sue Purkiss
It's always lovely to read a good review, and of course I was delighted with one I was sent recently. It's about my recently published book for children, Jack Fortune and the Search for the Hidden...
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THE GATE OF ANGELS by PENELOPE FITZGERALD: Review by Penny Dolan.
“The Library was connected with the public wash-house by the municipal fumigation rooms, where books could be disinfected after an outbreak of disease and old clothes could be boiled for redistribution...
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Cooking Up History... - Celia Rees
Cookery BooksLike many writers, I have lots of books: fiction, non fiction, biographies, books bought for research which could cover almost anything, travel books, history books, books about writing,...
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Countdown to a Coup by L.J. Trafford
“Once killing starts it is difficult to draw a line.” So, said Tacitus about the 15th January 69AD. This was the day that Emperor Galba was overthrown by Otho. Thus giving what would be known as the...
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The complexity of medieval Soberton (1) by Carolyn Hughes
When, several years ago, I embarked upon writing the first of the "Meonbridge Chronicles", I read a lot of books in preparation. Most of the books were filling in the gaps in my knowledge of how...
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Time and Tide Museum, Great Yarmouth by Imogen Robertson
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