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HISTORY DOESN’T LOOK THE SAME ANY MORE by Eleanor Updale
When I was young, I watched a lot of black-and-white films. They were on the telly every wet weekend afternoon, and although I must have seen some of them many times over, I never lost the sense that...
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A potted history of French Algeria, Carol Drinkwater
Last month I wrote a little about the events surrounding the Charlie Hebdo massacres in Paris along with my reflections, observations while travelling in Algeria seven years ago. I am continuing along...
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A Pirate's Life - Celia Rees
For the past couple of years, I've visited King Edward VI School, Handsworth, on or around World Book Day. The whole of Year 8 dress up as pirates, along with members of staff, and we have a jolly day...
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Taking to the Air: More joys of research by Christina Koning
As aviation features in my forthcoming novel, Time of Flight - the latest in a series of detective stories, set in the late 1920s and early 1930s - a visit to the Air Museum at Shuttleworth in...
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THE STARS' TENNIS BALLS by Ann Swinfen
We are merely the stars’ tennis-balls, struck and bandiedWhich way please them. John Webster (1580?-1625?), The Duchess of Malfi, IV.iv.52 The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in...
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The Weald and Downland Open Air Museum by Imogen Robertson
There are many good reasons to visit Chichester. There’s a fine cathedral, some brilliant architecture, and a great second-hand bookshop. The library and its staff are also lovely. I know that because...
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Good Luck Flowers by Kate Lord Brown
In many parts of the world, from the Arabian Peninsula to North Africa, South East Asia, India and Pakistan the dried and milled leaves of Lawsonia inermis the mignonette tree, also known as the...
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Emma Homan, painted by John Bradley, observed by Louisa Young
I met this little madam at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She's American, a New Yorker; her name is Emma Homan, and she was painted around 1844. Look at her! She's two.Look at her face:...
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All About Ida, by Clare Mulley
This year’s Oscar for the Best Foreign Language Film went to Ida, an extraordinary, haunting, Polish historical drama directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and written by Pawlikowski and Rebecca Lenkiewicz....
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Child migrants to Australia by Rosemary Hayes
Some years ago I was asked by my then publisher, Penguin Australia, to write a story about child migration to Australia, a subject about which I knew nothing. However, from the moment I began to...
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MUSIC WHILE YOU WORK, by Leslie Wilson
Music affects me in two ways when I’m writing. Firstly, there’s the music that actually occurs in the novel – a lot of Django Reinhart and Louis Armstrong in Last Train from Kummersdorf . When I was...
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DALLYING WITH DICE - a medieval pastime by Elizabeth Chadwick
Two men playing at a dicing table. Detail from the Prodigal Son window at Bourges CathedralNote that the chap on the right has no money and is down to his underpants.Last month I reviewed LOST LETTERS...
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The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction Shortlist by Elizabeth Laird
The Zone of Interest by Martin AmisThe Zone of Interest is a terrifying book by a writer who inhabits his subject with passion. The foul details of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz Birkenau (called Kat...
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An artist's haven by Carol Drinkwater
MirófountainI have been focusing quite a bit on war recently so I thought for this month’s blog I would choose a subject that is...
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Merci pour les fleurs, as they say in France. A Tiny Quiz by Louisa Young.
We hear so much about the hatchet jobs, the insults, the meanness and jealousy. Only today on Facebook one author was complaining about another calling him a ladypart, and a journalist was having the...
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Women Making Waves: The Newton Women’s Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, 2015,...
Sporting history will be made this month when for the first time, on 11 April 2015, women will row in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race on the same terms, and on the same waters, as men.Although held...
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Patrick Gale: A Place Called Winter, by Louisa Young
Photo credit: David Gwinnutt.A while ago my friend Patrick Gale, who I met at a reading a million years ago, when I was a tiny newbie and he was a glamorous experienced well-known writer, mentioned an...
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Cabinet of Curiosities: Great Uncle Andrew's Compass by Elizabeth Laird
My brother Graham inherited a kilt from our father's uncle Andrew. It was made to last forever, and so it would have done if it hadn't been for the moths which turned it eventually into a fine...
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We have five copies of Patrick Gale's A Place Called Winter to give away to the best answers to the following question:"Name another book that re-creates for you the atmosphere of a country in a...
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Queens of England by Mary Hoffman
No April Fools here - this is no joking matter.Here are two splendid volumes written by Elizabeth Norton and published by Amberley Press that will sort you out once and for all about English queens...
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