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TO BATTLE! CONFLICT IN FICTION. Notes from Harrogate History Festival by...
When writers mention conflict they are often talking about a tension between two or more of their characters. However, when Harrogate History Festival hosted a panel on this theme, conflict meant...
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Maps and Chaps - Celia Rees
When I was at school, this was how one of my teachers defined Geography and History. Of course, the scope of both subjects expands far beyond this narrow definition (what about Chapesses?) and neither...
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Le Bleuet de France & the Remembrance Poppy
Theresa BreslinOn Saturday, on my way to attend a lecture about Iconic Queens, I stepped into the lift in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and, quite by chance, met someone I knew....
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'Standing up for Beards' by A L Berridge
You can’t do history without doing beards. Only a few have obviously starring roles, such as the one grown by Philip II of Spain to be ‘singed’ by Francis Drake, but even the most ordinary set of...
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The Ghost Hunting Mobs of Victorian London by Imogen Robertson
Judging by the numerous sirens that go by my house every day, Bermondsey still keeps the Metropolitan Police pretty busy, but I doubt they spend as much time as they once did dealing with ghosts or...
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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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The Thames Valley History Festival by Kate Lord Brown
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and it's certainly true that the heart of this expat quickens the moment the plane banks over the coast of Britain. I'm just back from a flying visit to...
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IT WAS OFTEN QUITE DIFFICULT TO GET CREAM by Leslie Wilson
I have been reading Elizabeth Jane Howard's memoir 'Slipstream' and read about an American who told her, in 1946, that 'we had our small privations, too, you know. It was often quite difficult to get...
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A SURFEIT OF LAMPREYS AND OTHER MISFORTUNES: The Death of Henry I
King Henry I is not that often touched upon in fiction and one of the lesser studied kings of England in schools today. He has also been the subject of a couple of excellent academic biographies by the...
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Hats On for St Catherine - Joan Lennon
Today is the Day of St Catherine - patron saint of unmarried women. (Well, one of them. There's also St Andrew, St Agatha, and a disconcertingly large number of others.) I've always envied Roman...
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WORTH YOUR SALT? – Dianne Hofmeyr
Imagine a lake so pink, it’s the colour of a flamingo feather. Picture it surrounded by white, crystal mountains, glistening and sparkling in the sunlight. Out in the middle of the lake there are small...
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Girls in Pearls, Girls in Tears, by Louisa Young
I told the publishers, I just don't want a cover with a woman without a face - viewed from behind, or with no head. Of course I don't want a face either. It would be the wrong face - not my character's...
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The Original Hackers, by Clare Mulley
Last week I was delighted to meet Ruth Ive, ‘the woman who censored Churchill’, as she is styled in her memoirs.[i]As a war-time telephone censor, Ruth is probablythe last person still with us who once...
View ArticleThe History Girls: The Original Hackers, by Clare Mulley
The History Girls: The Original Hackers, by Clare Mulley: Last week I was delighted to meet Ruth Ive, ‘the woman who censored Churchill’, as she is styled in her memoirs. [i] As a war-tim...
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The Summer of 1940 by Lydia Syson
A big welcome to Lydia Syson, who is our guest for November. Appropiaitely enough in theis onth of Remembrance, she has written a novel set in 1940.Photo: Sanne VliegenthartAbout Lydia: she is a...
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November Competition
Open to UK readers only - sorry!We have five copies of Lydia Syson's book That Burning Summer to give away to the best answers to this question:'Who do you wish you could have hidden and protected in...
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