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Lovely Lucca
We have just returned from a few days in Lucca, a walled mediaeval city in Tuscany - and my post is due for tomorrow; so it's going to be something of an extended postcard! Looking out today at the...
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PETERLOO - a place, a time and a film. By Penny Dolan
Some time ago, visiting Manchester for the first time, I “discovered” what seemed an impressive square. An enormous Victorian gothic building dominated the site but, even so, I did wonder why such a...
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Glass Town Wars and the Brontës - Celia Rees
I've got a new book coming out on November 1st.With any luck, I'll be asked to talk about it and will have to answer that most commonly asked of questions: 'Where do your ideas come from?': I've been...
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The Rich American, the Travelling Captain and a Phallic Quest By L.J. Trafford
It hangs in a glass case in dimmed lighting: a small phallus carved in white with wings made from bronze. The label informs me it comes from Pompeii and that such items were symbols of fertility and...
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The Meon Valley Railway - friendly, pleasurable, beautiful by Carolyn Hughes
Last month’s blog looked at the literary and historical associations of the route along which the Meon Valley Railway once ran, many of which associations referred to people and times well before the...
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Historical Fiction and Historical Fantasy: A Question of Genres by Catherine...
This is a slightly different blog this month, a picking-all-your-brains exercise if you will. I've been asked to be the historical fiction voice in a discussion about the differences/overlaps and, who...
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Voices Unearthed: Diane Purkiss's 'English Civil War.' Leslie Wilson
In my childhood, I went to historical novels if I wanted to find out about the lives of ordinary people: even Trevelyan's 'Social History of England,' which my father gave me when I was a young...
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GO FORTH AND MULTIPLY - A brief history of the 'F' word by Elizabeth Chadwick.
I belong to several historical forums and every few months, the subject of medieval swear words will arise and a discussion will begin about the origins of the word 'fuck' and when it became a swear...
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Crossing the Alps by Miranda Miller
While researching my current novel, which is set in 18th snd early 19th century Rome, I came across some interesting descriptions of how it was to cross the Alps before there were any railways....
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The Forgotten Summer, by Carol Drinkwater
I am two novels along since I published THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER with Penguin in March 2016. For those who read my post last month you will know that my latest novel, THE HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE CLIFF, to...
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A Norfolk Wedding by Janie Hampton
The Norfolk wedding of Rachel Gurney & Rosslyn Bruce, 1908Just one hundred and ten years ago this month my grandmother, Rachel Gurney married Rosslyn Bruce at Northrepps in Norfolk. Rachel, aged...
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Gang of Suspects Named in Kidnap Case
by Ruth DownieSTOLEN: VILBIA HELP OF GODDESS SUMMONEDGUILTY PARTY THREATENED WITH BECOMING LIQUID AS WATERThe loss of Vilbia is the most famous cold case that’s come down to us from the Romano-British...
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Going out on a limb with Cynthia Jefferies
October's guest is Cynthia Jefferies, better known to some of us as Cindy, the name she used for her children's books.Cynthia Jefferies is a long-established writer for children, whose work has been...
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Cabinet of Curiosities by Charlotte Wightwick: Manuscripts, Magical and...
As its Halloween, it is almost obligatory that I should write about things that go bump in the night. This year, I’ve been enjoying my spooky fix via Sky’s Discovery of Witches– a TV series featuring...
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October competition
To win a copy of Cynthia Jefferies' The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan, just answer the question below in the Comments section:"Which character from a book you enjoyed as a child would you like to...
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Four Queens and a Countess - Review by Mary Hoffman
How to upstage a queenJill Armitage's previous book was about Arbella Stuart, a possible claimant to the throne of England when Elizabeth l died, and she does make a cameo appearance here. But the star...
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The Books We Read, by Gillian Polack
This weekend reminded me that big events, especially tragic ones, can touch our lives and change our lives. When they appear in fiction, we have feelings about them. The reason I don’t read a lot of...
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Agnes Richter: The Seamstress Who Stitched Her Life Story Onto Her Jacket. By...
Some months ago, the brilliant @WomensArt1 account tweeted an image of a small linen jacket embroidered all over with lettering. They explained it had been created by a woman forced into an asylum in...
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The Elf-Mounds of Ireland... (3) by Katherine Langrish
The Corlea TrackwayNot so many elf-mounds this time, though there is a connection to Brú na Bóinne/Newgrange. This post is about an elf-labour undertaken by Midir, 'king of the elf-mounds of Ireland’....
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Infamy again - Michelle Lovric
Venice is taking a small stand against all the Disneyfication, cruisification and forgetting of the last decade. A small piece of her history is … we hope … about to be restored to her: a column of...
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