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Fear of Puppets Overcome by Curiosity, by Louisa Young
Last year I found myself embroiled in a country & western shadow puppet production homage to Truman Capote's 'In Cold Blood'. Yes I did. Really. I played a murder victim or two, whistled 'Yellow...
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Four Sisters, by Clare Mulley
To mark ‘Women’s History Month’ I am dedicating my March blog to four Russian sisters…A couple of years ago the Russianist, historian, translator and author Helen Rappaport decided to write about four...
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Interview with Carol Drinkwater by Kate Lord Brown
Today, I’m delighted to welcome actress, author and film-maker Carol Drinkwater to The History Girls. Here is a bit about her:Anglo-Irish actress Carol Drinkwater is perhaps still most familiar to...
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(Kitchen) Cabinet of Curiosities by Mary Hoffman
PhotosVanRobinI was listening to The Archers (long-running BBC radio soap for our non-English Followers) when I heard 80-year-old Jill Archer rejoicing to her daughter-in-law Ruth that she had found...
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To win one of five copies of Carol Drinkwater's The Only Girl in the World, just answer the question below:"What is your favourite novel in which the leading character uses music or literature or a...
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Cromwell at the Swan by Mary Hoffman
Achieving the impossible - a review of the RSC productions of Wolf Hall and Bring up the BodiesBen Miles as Thomas Cromwell and Lydia Leonard as Anne BoleynWhen I first heard that Ben Miles was to play...
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Writing What You Know - Lucy Inglis
When writing non-fiction, there is a definite process for constructing a body of research and then drawing upon it for a book. The more sound and extensive the research, the better for the book. The...
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Invent a Punctuation Mark - and defend it: Musings on the History of Exams by...
This year is a long dreaded year in our family. I knew it was coming when I had my second child in 1998. Two children, two years apart - that meant the time would come when we would have them sitting...
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The Knight of the Tower - by Katherine Langrish
I was looking for something to write about for today’s blog post, and decided I’d try and find Thomas Tusser’s Book of Good Husbandry, that wonderful Elizabethan farmer’s guide written in...
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"Converting Our Island into a Peninsula" - Joan Lennon
You know how it is - when I was researching the Slightly Jones Mysteries* I came across far more fascinating tidbits than could possibly fit into the stories themselves. My publishers kindly allowed...
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The Public Part of UK Author Earnings - Katherine Roberts
April 6th marks the start of a new financial year, and I have a new History Girls post to write... so you can probably guess what this one is going to be about! In the same way that I find it...
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Not Five but only Four Postcards by Adèle Geras
Once upon a time, I used to collect period postcards. I have lots of them, in assorted files and boxes in my house. I picked them up at book fairs, and in second hand shops where there were often...
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The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2014 by Elizabeth Laird
In the five years since its inception, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction has grown in every way, reflecting the increasing importance of historical fiction in the literary output of the...
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Museé Gourmand by Caroline Lawrence
Mougins is a pretty village on the Cote d’Azur up in the hills behind Cannes. Until I was invited to do an author event at an international school eight years ago, I’d never heard of it. On that first...
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Venice on the eve of World War One, part two - Michelle Lovric
Having left you cruelly dangling last month– wondering both which History Girl and which lovers were in play – I am now resuming my journey down the Grand Canal, inspired by research that I undertook...
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Three Minutes Around Pudding Lane, by Laurie Graham
If, like me, you live in ignorance of video games, happy to leave them to a younger generation, I bring to your attention a project that has used game technology to create something rather brilliant: a...
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Beauty and the Buerk, by H.M. Castor
Michael Buerk (a BBC broadcaster and former newsreader) has made me very cross indeed this week. He has said that television presenters who “got a job mainly because [they] look nice” should not 'cry...
View ArticleMarch Competition Winners
The winners of the March competition are: JoRuan PeatClare the ReaderPlease send your land addresses to:David Sanger dsanger@scholastic.co.ukto claim your prizes. Congratulations!
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POLITICS AND THE ART OF INTIMACY: Levina Teerlinc, a sixteenth century...
The mid-sixteenth century saw the rise of a new art form: the portrait miniature. Designed to be hidden, rather than displayed in public, miniatures were worn on ribbons tucked away from prying eyes...
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Writers' Houses 1: Max Gate - by Sue Purkiss
Portrait of HardyI think it’s always interesting to visit houses furnished as they would have been in the past. It’s part of this whole thing of trying to imagine life in different periods, of trying...
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