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The Aspidistra Radio Transmitter #WW2
by Deborah SwiftHarold Robin - WW2 Radio EngineerThe Shadow Network which forms the title of my latest book refers to the fake news radio stations set up by Sefton Delmer in WW2. These secret radio...
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The Men who Ate Gold ~ by Lesley Downer
Like a great cloud The Wiraqochas [Whites] Demanding gold Have invaded us. The Death of Atau Wallpa, Runasimi [Quechua] epic lament put into writing in...
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Art, Colonialism and Change by Stephanie Williams
If you move fast, you can just catch the fabulous exhibition Entangled Pasts 1768-Now, Art, Colonialism and Change at the Royal Academy in London which ends on 28 April.Yinka Shonibare CBE RA used the...
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Ada Lovelace - by Sue Purkiss
On a recent stay on Exmoor, I came across an article about someone called Ada Lovelace. I had vaguely heard of her, but if you'd asked me why, I wouldn't have been able to tell you. Yet she turns out...
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To Tate Britain - and Ellen Terry’s Dress. By Penny Dolan
The iconic portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth in her beetle-wing dress has been a favourite painting of mine for many, many years. I am not alone in my enthusiasm...
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Spies, Lies & Deception - Celia Rees
Being interested in spies and all things spying, I just caught the end of this fascinating exhibition at The Imperial War Museum. I first visited the IWM in the Sixties and have been a regular visitor...
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A Dark Plot by L.J. Trafford
Death of an EmperorOn the 18th of September in the year 96 CE, a young Imperial slave boy was attending to the shrine to the Lares, the gods of the household, that resided in the bedchamber of the...
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Web-surfing and a C16th entrepreneur by Elisabeth Storrs
As an historical novelist, I encounter both joy and tribulation in researching via the internet. Surfing the web provides a plethora of reference articles with helpful hyperlinks to other pages. Woe...
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Jesus-in-a-bottle - Michelle Lovric
I’m spending most of spring in Venice this year. For the first six weeks I carried the usual A6 spiral-bound notebook everywhere. I kept adding lines and stanzas to a long poem I was building inside...
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Magnificent Men and Disastrous Machines. By Judith Allnatt
This is the story of Percy Pilcher, a man who could have beaten the Wright brothers to their record of first flight in a powered aircraft if only he had made one crucial decision differently.Born in...
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A Pause to Sip Wine in Burgundy, by Carol Drinkwater
A statue of wine-pickers in Puligny-MontrachetA few days ago, I set off from our Olive Farm overlooking the Bay of Cannes in the south of France on a nine-hour drive to our northern home east of Paris...
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The Dead Man's Penny by V E H Masters
Writing books can be quite a lonely business. In the past few years, post COVID, I've occasionally taken a table at Fairs, along with fellow historical fiction author Margaret Skea, to sell my books...
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Polish Resistance in World War II by Kathryn Gauci
Polish Resistance in World War II Members of the Polish resistance (Polish Institute of National Remembrance) June 6, 2024, marked the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord and the D-Day landingsin...
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Casting my vote by Maggie Brookes
Whenever I cast my vote I feel I can hear the cheers of all the women suffragists and suffragettes who worked so hard to win that right for me, but when I was posting my ballot paper this time, I...
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Angelica Kauffman by Miranda Miller
Angelica Paintress of Minds, my novel about the eighteenth -century artist Angelica Kauffman, was published by The Barbican Press in 2020. Publication was carefully timed to coincide with an...
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A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF 18THC GWYNEDD ... by Susan Stokes-Chapman
‘To understand it,’ Linette begins, ‘you must know our history. Many of the Welsh estates have dwindled dreadfully in recent years, to the detriment of those who relied on the landowners for their...
View ArticleCrofting in the 1940s - Joan Lennon
A lovely film. Make yourself a cup of tea and let the voices wash over you. It's wartime and has been for some time, but the sheep still need gathered and clipped and the children still are in the...
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The Bristol Conference -- Bookish History Girl Fun! by Sheena Wilkinson
I've just returned from a wonderful conference in Bristol, with a suitcase full of old books, friendships made and renewed, and a head full of facts -- what schoolgirls wore undertheir uniforms in the...
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Forgotten Women
During lockdown, a group of a dozen women, who knew each other through family history events and courses, began to meet online for mutual encouragement with various research projects. We were aware...
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'How to Fake a Dragon' by Karen Maitland
A Jenny HaniverPhoto: M.ViolanteIt is so important to take children to museums, I mean proper museums with real objects in glass cases, not ones simply filled with interactive computer screens.I...
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