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Writing the Bedlam Trilogy by Miranda Miller
Our guest this month is Miranda Miller. This what she says about herself:Miranda Miller has published seven novels, a book of short stories about Saudi Arabia and a book of interviews with homeless...
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October in the Cabinet of Curiosities, by Laurie Graham
No, not a gravy boat, though it would make a very pretty one. This is a bourdaloue, once the salvation of many a lady caught with a full bladder in a public place. The only problem was, having used it...
View ArticleOctober Competition
Competitions are open to UK residents only, we're afraid.To win one of five copies of The Fairy Visions of Richard Dadd by Miranda Miller, our October guest, just give an answer to the following...
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The Undying fascination of Anne Boleyn by Mary Hoffman
If you put "Anne Boleyn" into a search engine, you get over two million results. Do the same on Amazon and you get over six hundred book titles. She plays a starring role in the two Man Booker...
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'A Welch rarebit and a pot of beer'. Georgian Debating Societies - Lucy Inglis
Yesterday I went to Bristol to film with Lucy Worsley for next year’s BBC4 series Georgian Revolutions. We were talking about debating societies, their effect on society as a whole and the move to...
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Builder's bum or housemaid's knee? by Eve Edwards
This October, the builders of Britain have been issued a challenge by a new health minister, Jane Ellison: they are to shape up, pull up and stop displaying so much cheek, so to speak. I had to...
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"The Black Loyalists" by Ruth Holmes Whitehead, reviewed by Katherine Langrish
“They had a passion for freedom, and they acted upon it.”This wonderful book is by my friend Ruth Holmes Whitehead, a distinguished historian and ethnologist who worked for over forty years at the Nova...
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China and My Mum - A Story in Pictures - Joan Lennon
Jean Alaithia Lennon was born in 1921 on Mount Emei (one of the four Holy Mountains) in Sichuan Province, China. By the time she was three, her father (a medical missionary) had died of typhus and...
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Black Swans and the Value of the Unknown – Katherine Roberts
black swanNot that long ago, Europeans assumed all swans were white. Until the sighting of the first black swan in 1697, when Willem de Vlamingh explored the Swan River in Western Australia, nobody...
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THE LAST RUNAWAY by Tracy Chevalier. A review by Adèle Geras
On March 29th of this year, Tracy Chevalier herself wrote on this blog, all about how she researches her novels. It was a fascinating piece and I said in the comments box at the time that I was longing...
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Hersende, Haemorrhoids and Healing Water by Karen Maitland
King Louis IX receiving envoysLast week I was privileged to give a joint talk on Medicine through the Ages with Ruth Downie, author of the wonderful series of Roman novels. Preparing for our...
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Writing on the Right Side of the Brain
by Caroline Lawrence I just finished a wonderfully stimulating week as Writer in Residence at Summer Fields, a boarding school in Oxford for boys of late primary and middle school age. I leapt at the...
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Literary Travellers Then and Now by Elizabeth Laird
Just back from travels in Kerala, around the south western corner of India. Here's a picture to set the scene:The backwaters in KeralaFlorence NightingaleI've been musing on the nature of tourism. The...
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Frail Tenements of Clay, by Laurie Graham
I was present recently at the inaugural meeting of Ireland’s branch of the Richard III Society and one of the questions before us was, what are we going to do? We need, it was agreed, a crackingly...
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A different kind of remembering? by H.M. Castor
I was going to write an entirely different post today about Remembrance Day – I had it fully imagined, and even half written – but something else has swept it off my mental desk. Something that’s still...
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Elizabeth I’s Virginity, the Fate of the Princes in the Tower and Other...
It is rare that a definitive truth emerges from history, like that of Richard III’s remains, proving that he did indeed suffer from scoliosis. But he also suffered from Tudor propaganda that, through...
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We Have No Claim On The Stars, Hedd Wyn another War Poet Catherine Johnson
Ellis Evan's homeIt's November. The poppy wreaths have been laid and by some modern edict it seems everyone, especially those in public view must wear one or be damned....
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Cant
by Marie-Louise JensenIn early Georgian times it became fashionable, especially for well-to-do young men to speak 'cant' or slang; the language as spoken by the poor or more especially by the...
View ArticleAutumn competition winners
We have had a few IT problems here at The History Girls so are repeating the winners of the last two Competitions. September (Robert Low) SamAliceMark Burgess Please contact Cassie Browne...
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Remembrance: by Sue Purkiss
It's that time of year again.Remembrance. Remembering. As I've written before on this blog, my father, like most of his generation, fought in the war. Well, he didn't do all that much fighting; he was...
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