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Book Review: Girl with a White Dog
By Anne Booth(Post by Marie-Louise Jensen)Jessie is excited when her gran gets a white Alsatian puppy, but with Snowy's arrival a mystery starts to unfold. As Jessie learns about Nazi Germany at...
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A Right Bobby Dazzler and Four Marys Catherine Johnson
This post came about because I was reading a memoir by Mikey Cuddihy about her childhood, orphaned at 9 and uprooted from her New York family and sent away to the alternative school in Suffolk,...
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The Children and Puppet Thing - by Penny Dolan
Why children, I wonder? On Monday, I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum to see the Shakespeare Puppet show mentioned by Louisa Young in her History Girls “Fear of Puppetry Overcome” post a few...
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The Road Goes Ever On... Celia Rees
So begins The Walking Song, composed by Bilbo Baggins and sung in J.R.R. Tolkien's Hobbit and sometimes in the Lord of the Rings. They do a lot of walking in both, so a walking song must have come in...
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JOHN MUIR, environmentalist, nature lover: by Theresa Breslin
Image Copyright ScarpaJohn Muir, considered to be the founder of the world’s National Park movement, is one of my big heroes.He was born in Dunbar on the east coast of Scotland, where you can visit his...
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Researching Girl with a White Dog (Guest Post)
Marie-Louise Jensen: Today on the History Girls blog, I'm pleased to introduce Anne Booth, author of Girl With A White Dog, which I reviewed here on the 15th of this month. Anne has written a fabulous...
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The First Georgians by Imogen Robertson
Gerorge I, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Electorof Hanover (1660-1727) Studio of Sir Godfrey KellnerBritain is going 18th century crazy. I know that because I read it in The Times. We have good...
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The Town That Didn't Stare by Kate Lord Brown
The Hero: Flight Lieutenant Richard Hope Hillary1919 - 1943Fear no more the heat o' the sun; Nor the furious winter's rages, Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages; Golden...
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THE DAY THE WAR ENDED, by Leslie Wilson
My grandfather's WW1 medal, the one everyonegot for taking part, with the black-red-white Imperial colours.Last year I was asked to contribute a story to an anthology that does what it says on the tin:...
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The Warhorse in the 12th and Early 13th Centuries by Elizabeth Chadwick.
The other day there was a discussion on a historical list I'm on concerning the warhorses that would have been around during the days of William Marshal - knight par excellence in the mid 12th and...
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TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO by Eleanor Updale
There are more than three months to go until the actual centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, and already some of us are feeling twinges of battle fatigue. There has been some tremendous...
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GOLD and COCA in COLOMBIA – Dianne Hofmeyr
Gold is the most exquisite of all things… Whoever possesses gold can acquire all that he desires in this world.’ Christopher Columbus, 1503, in a letter to the King and Queen of Spain. He was referring...
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Grandfathers, by Clare Mulley
During a recent sort out, my mum found a small square of newspaper, cut out and neatly gummed onto a piece of glass cut to size. It had been sellotaped too, protecting the ink and turning the paper a...
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Saints, Spies and Saboteurs
Our guest this month is Ann Swinfen, one of those multi-talented women who seem to be able to do anything, juggling a large family, academia, historical research and writing fiction.Ann Swinfen...
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Ann Swinfen is generously offering one of her three recent titles to five Followers who provide the best answers to this question:"What novel would you recommend to other readers in which a small group...
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Marbling in Florence by Mary Hoffman
This could so easily degenerate into a post about writers and stationery lust. How many of us own something like the above - a delicious notebook bound in "Carta Marmorizzata," marbled paper, just...
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Matthew Lewis and The Monk
Matthew Lewis is one of the most famous of the original Gothic authors, and to my mind probably the most authentic. Most people, and certainly most students start out with Horace Walpole's risible...
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There's nothing much happening in history... by Eve Edwards
This is not so much a post about history but about the vagaries of publishing historical fiction for a younger reader. You see, I always ask my agent and publishers for feedback after they've been to...
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Summertime and the living is easy. Or is it? - by Katherine Langrish
This is my copy of the book I couldn’t find for my last month’s post – an Elizabethan farmer’s almanack in doggerel verse, providing a year’s supply of farming hints for the original readers, and a...
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