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AN ARCHER AT THE ARMOURIES by Penny Dolan
I’ve always hankered after a job in a Museum: one specific and rather showing-off sort of job. I’ve told stories in a couple of historical settings myself so I am fascinated by the people who step into...
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'Sow-drunk or Sheep-drunk' by Karen Maitland
Now that January's month of sobriety is well and truly over and the wine intake has started to creep up again it is, perhaps, comforting to remember that the 8th March is the feast day of St Duthac, a...
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Black Bile in Sunny Paris by Caroline Lawrence
I'm in Paris this weekend on the first glorious days after a wet and miserable winter. On Monday I will speak to children at Marymount International School about Mysteries of Ancient Rome. One of the...
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Venice on the eve of World War 1, part one - Michelle Lovric
Last summer I took a chatty ride down the Grand Canal in the company of Michael Portillo and a television crew. We were filming an episode of Great Continental Railway Journeys in which Mr Portillo...
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A Right Royal Fish, by Laurie Graham
I’ve never hankered after a Rolex watch and you can keep your marrons glacees, but there is one luxury item I do sometimes dream of: a pot of caviar in the fridge. It is a ridiculous fantasy. 30 grams...
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The shape of grace - by H.M. Castor
Vaslav Nijinsky (1889/90-1950) & Tamara Karsavina (1885-1978) in 'Le Spectre de la Rose', 1911[Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsSince today is the birthday of Vaslav Nijinsky, one of the most...
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KATHERINE PARR: Character, Courage and Commitment – by Elizabeth Fremantle
As March is National Women’s History Month, celebrating women of character, courage and commitment and also coincides with the paperback publication of my novel QUEEN’S GAMBIT I felt it apt to take a...
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Buffalo Soldier by Tanya Landman Catherine Johnson
Tanya Landman's brand new novel is a tour de force. The voice of Charley - born Charlotte - does not waver, and the story of a girl from slave to freedom via the American Civil War and service in one...
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by Marie-Louise JensenThe History Girls' visit to Aphra Behn's tomb the week before last was a deeply moving experience. I hadn't quite anticipated how emotional I would find it. But to stand there and...
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'Poetry is no way to teach the Great War': Sue Purkiss
It will not have escaped your notice that this year is the hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. There have already been masses of documentaries, dramas, articles and books to...
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THE BOOK OF BOSSY GIRLS? By Penny Dolan.
Recently my interest was caught a media discussion: the kind where X says this, so Y spouts up with that, often through tweets and social network sites, and giving both X& Y& also Z material...
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Fight for the Right - Emily Davison and the Internet - Celia Rees
Bossy Girls, Cranky Ladies, Daughters of Time? The History Girls have blogged about them all. We now have our own anthology, no news to anybody, and I can't resist a bit of a trumpet. I have to admit...
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Cranky Old Lady by Theresa Breslin
Even now I’m not sure in what specific year Great Aunt Mary was born. When I was growing up she always claimed to be a child of the ‘modern era’, but as I got older and recalled the stories she’d told...
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Sulpicia's cranky poems by Tansy Rayner Roberts
We welcome to the blog today Tansy Rayner Roberts, to tell us more about the Cranky Ladies of History blog tour and crowdfunding project. Here she introduces us to a forgotten Roman poet.Tansy is a...
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Theft of Life by Imogen Robertson
I own I am shock’d at the purchase of slavesAnd fear those who buy them and sell them are knaves;What I hear of their hardships, their tortures and groans,Is almost enough to drive pity from stones.I...
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GREENHAM COMMON - WOMEN SHOW WHAT THEY CAN DO, by Leslie Wilson
Greenham women gather at the base in 1982.Photo: CeridwenI found out about the Bomb when I was about seven, when my primary school teacher informed us, in a slightly panicky way, that it didn't matter...
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EMPRESS MATILDA - Having the right to be cranky by Elizabeth Chadwick
Before I embarked on my trilogy about Eleanor of Aquitaine, I wrote a stand alone novel titled LADY OF THE ENGLISH about Eleanor's illustrious mother in law the indomitable Empress Matilda whom history...
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WHAT A CAD! by Eleanor Updale
I've just broken one of my personal rules, and done a book review. Luckily, the work in question turned out to be more than good. It was Professor Jerry White's Zeppelin Nights - an account of London...
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The giraffe that beguiled not just a King but a nation – Dianne Hofmeyr
A giraffe walking through the streets of Paris in 1827 must have been a wondrous sight. What was this strange horned, half horse, half camel creature with impossibly long legs and a black tongue? Not...
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