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'Broken Beauty': terror and healing - Michelle Lovric
June 3rd, two days from now, is the first anniversary of the London Bridge terror attack, in which eight people were killed and 48 injured. It happened yards from where I live. When something like this...
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Talking history in a writer's fiction... with the writer (Brenda Clough), by...
Because so many readers enjoyed the conversations I have with other writers, this month I’ve asked US writer Brenda Clough in to chat. First up, an introduction, then on with the conversation. It’s not...
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The Best Historical Fiction Set on Islands - By Anna Mazzola
Islands, with their closed communities, their remoteness, their uniqueness, have a special place in an author’s heart. Sometimes they become not just settings, but characters in themselves. I chose...
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Of Magpies, Eels and Quarrels - Katherine Langrish
Looking through my bookshelves for inspiration for today’s post, I found - as you do - Caxton’s translation of ‘The Book of the Knight of the Tower’. I pulled it out, opened it up, and immediately came...
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Bizarre Silks by Joan Lennon
I've got some French Huguenot blood in me* and so when I saw there was a programme about them, presented by the wide-eyed Amber Butchart and called The First Refugees,** I gave it a go. Which is where...
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Joy and Gladness by Sheena Wilkinson
Another in my occasional series of little books from the past.I can’t stand those cosy aphorisms that fly about on social media. You know the sort of thing – all about counting your blessings and the...
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The Queen and I by Adèle Geras
The recent wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle has prompted me to write this post: a frank confession of my practically life-long interest in, and admiration for the Royal Family. I speak not as a...
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'Rain, Rain, Go Away ...' by Karen Maitland
Norman priest's door at Church of St. Medard & St GildardLittle Bytham, Lincolnshire. The two birds on either side of the niche are probably the eagle of St Medard whose imagemay once have occupied...
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The Key to the Womb
by Caroline LawrenceI have been studying the remains and also the grave-goods of a 14-year-old girl from 3rd century Roman London as part of the inspiration for a new book provisionally titled The Girl...
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I do remember them and I was there by Mary Hoffman
The Sixties, that is. I don't think it really hit me that the 1960s now count as history until I saw Angela Davis on Channel 4 News and realised it was part of a feature on 1968 and that was fifty...
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The Great Mallard Chase (or, another example of Oxford eccentricity)
THE GREAT MALLARD CHASEA mallardOn the night of January 14, 2001, some of Oxford's most learned fellows could be seen marching around All Souls College behind a wooden duck held aloft on a pole. They...
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Roman-ish gardens,
by Antonia Senior.A few years ago, we bought a house with a beautiful, large and overgrown garden. I had never lived in a house before, let alone had a garden. How hard can it be, I thought, to look...
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Sugar and Spice and all things nice - the 17th Century Diet
by Deborah SwiftThe concept of dieting would have been alien to our 17th Century forbears. In those days, the plumper you were, the better. Plumpness indicated wealth and class, and women aspired to be...
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Listening to Scent - by Lesley Downer
The Tale of Genji, Chapter 34Catching the scent of orange trees that wait to bloom until the fifth month I recall from long ago the scented sleeves of one now gone Kokinshu poem number 139 (published...
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Anthony Bourdain and the history of suicide: the importance of language by...
On 8 June, the BBC reported the sad news that US celebrity chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain had died as a result of suicide. Over the next few days, tributes to Bourdain poured in for...
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Brunel: how to 'meet with Triumph and Disaster, and treat those two imposters...
I recently started volunteering on the SS Great Britain, Isambard Kingdom Brunel's famous ship, the first iron ship in the world: once a rusty hulk abandoned in the Falklands, but now a thing of beauty...
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Bretton Hall and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park by Penny Dolan
Near Wakefield lies the Bretton Hall estate, with its landscaped gardens, lawns and lakes. The grounds hold a changing collection of work by contemporary British and international sculptors: this is...
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My Top Historical Novels - Celia Rees
Like many writers, I have a lot of books. They are threatening to take over the house. It is time for some sorting out and that inevitably means some will have to go. How am I going to decide which to...
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An Imperial Love Triangle? by L.J. Trafford
Imperial history is full of scandal. Nero murdering his mother, Caligula sleeping with his sisters, Tiberius getting up to all sorts of things on the island of Capri. Even so called good emperors...
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