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Charcoal Burning - our woodland heritage
by Deborah Swift“The charcoal burner has tales to tell.He lives in the forest, alone in the forest,He sits in the forest, alone in the forest,And rabbits come up and they give him good morning,And...
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Imagine ... the Golden Road to Samarkand - by Lesley Downer
We travel not for trafficking alone:By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned: For lust of knowing what should not be known We take the golden road to Samarkand. Hassan: The Golden Journey to...
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Close Up and Personal: The Hairdresser in History
By Susan VincentThis morning I stood in front of the mirror and tried to cut my own hair. As the weeks bite down and our locked-in lives drag by, I’m losing my definition. My short, sharp bob is shaggy...
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A walk in the woods: Sue Purkiss
Ironically, the beginning of the lockdown coincided with the beginning of spring - and with a spell of glorious sunny weather. I'm lucky enough to live on the slopes of the Mendip Hills, with the...
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READING IN SELF-ISOLATION by Penny Dolan
So far, in this time of enforced isolation, the Dunnetts, the Mantels, the Sansoms and other historical tomes have stayed on the bookshelves. My need was forsomething brisk to stand against the...
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In the Ghetto by Mary Hoffman
In Autumn 2019 I spent two and a half weeks as Writer in Residence in Venice, invited by the university (Ca' Foscari) and its Center for Humanities and Social Change. My task was to write a book for...
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The Ancient Guide to Coping with Lock-down by L.J. Trafford
These are strange times when we find ourselves constrained to our homes. As a result the country is awash with glossy Sunday supplements offering advice and suggestions for how we should spend our...
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Pandemic then and now... by Carolyn Hughes
My series of historical novels is set in the middle of the 14th century, a period (in)famous for its devastating plague. The first novel wasn’t actually about the Black Death, but about its aftermath...
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Sex, Death and Eternal Love by Elisabeth Storrs
I was inspired to write my A Tale of Ancient Rome series when I found a photo of a C6th BCE sarcophagus of a man and women lying on their bed in a tender embrace. The casket (known as the Sarcophagus...
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Beautiful Libraries & Travel Dreams by Catherine Hokin
Like every writer I know, I am wedded to libraries and bookshops and, ten weeks into this strange new world we are now living in, I am missing my regular haunts.I have two libraries I regularly spend...
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What's in a Name ? by Judith Allnatt
What's in a name? Well, often quite a nod to history. Our own names often tell us something of the occupations off our ancestors, as in Potter, Shepherd, Smith (blacksmith) and Whitaker (white acre)....
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On Purbeck Marble
Tomb of William Marshal: Temple Church. Author's photographPurbeck Marble was a highly prized building material in the Middle Ages especially from the 11th to 16th centuries, with its heyday in the...
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Angelica, Paintress of Minds by Miranda Miller When I was writing my novel about the fascinating painter Angelica Kauffman there were two things I found difficult to understand: her devout...
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Jean Giono's Legacy, by Carol Drinkwater
Jean Giono born in Manosque in 1895 and died in the same village in 1970.I am frequently asked who my favourite writers are; authors I return to time and time again. One...
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Why I’m not busy doing publicity for my new novel - Michelle Lovric
It’s hard to write or speak right now without mentioning Covid, so I’m not even going to try to avoid the subject. Here’s the question all writers are asking one another: have you blossomed into...
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Gold in them there hills - the Roman hunt for treasure in Wales - by Ruth...
Those of us who have been watching “The Luminaries” know exactly where gold comes from. It’s found by a ragged creature in a broad-brimmed hat who spends hours squatting by a stream, shaking a large...
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Miss Graham's Cold War Cook Book by Celia Rees
It was a very long time coming but it is here at last! Yesterday was publication day! I must confess to thinking that the day would never come. The book was in my mind when I joined the History Girls...
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Why the eighteenth century? By Gillian Polack
My mind has been in the eighteenth century again. This is a bad habit. I studied the eighteenth century as an undergraduate and never quite escaped it. When I went to put it into fiction, some years...
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The Idea of Justice in Historical Fiction – by Anna Mazzola
Dostoyevsky famously said: ‘The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.’ Winston Churchill said, ‘The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime...
View ArticleTom Lehrer and the Cold War by Joan Lennon
Watch this, recorded in September 1967. Does it bring back memories, or is it something new?We Will All Go TogetherOr how about this one, recorded at the same time:So Long, Mom (A Song For World War...
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