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Inspiration - Celia Rees
A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to accompany my friend, the artist Julia Griffiths Jones, and photographer Toril Brancher on a trip to Slovakia. This was a working trip. Julia was moving her...
View Article'Life in Squares' - how I learned to love the Bloomsbury Group - by Christina...
I must confess that I started watching ‘Life in Squares’, the new three-part drama about the Bloomsbury Group, which was recently shown on BBC2, with considerable reservations. What on earth was there...
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North-East Passage - by Ann Swinfen
In the early summer of 1553 three ships – the Edward Bonaventure, the Bona Confidentia and the Bona Esperanza– set sail from London on a voyage into the unknown. As they sailed past GreenwichPalace,...
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Procrastination and Hedgerow Jelly by Janie Hampton
While thinking about my blog for History Girls, my mind wandered and I looked out of the window. What did I see? The view from my studyA reason to leave my desk - my vegetable bed was calling out to be...
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Imagining Eglantyne, by Clare Mulley
‘We have to devise a means of making known the facts in such a way as to touch the imagination of the world.’ Eglantyne Jebb Poster for Anne Chamberlain's production, EglantyneEarlier this month I was...
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A Want of Kindness by Joanne Limberg
Photo credit: Chris HadleyOur July guest is Joanne Limberg, talking about her début novel, A Want of Kindness, about Queen Anne. Joanne Limburg began her writing career as a poet, publishing two...
View ArticleJuly competition
Our competitions our open to UK Followers only - sorry!To win one of five copies of Joanne Limburg's A Want of Kindness, post an answer to the question below in the Comments section and send a copy of...
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Cleo rides again or How to have a historical launch party by Mary Hoffman
You remember that our May guest was Lucy Coats? She talked about the masses of research she had done for her latest YA novel, Cleo (published by Orchard). Well, last month the book was thoroughly...
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Australia (and my family) from the 1920s - Gillian Polack
The anniversary of my father’s death is coming up. I will light a candle in his memory and I will tell bad jokes so that his sense of humour is not forgotten. I will miss him, as I always do. This year...
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Cloaks, Daggers and Masked Maurauders by Imogen Robertson
The Harrogate History Festival is coming up in October and I’m going along to see if I can grab a selfie with Neil Oliver and Melvyn Bragg. Ideally both at once. I’m also chairing an event about...
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Hungry Heart by Kate Lord Brown
Even in the days of Kindle, Abebooks, Amazon and all the online book retailers there are some out of print books so rare that you have to be patient to find a copy, let alone one within budget. I had...
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Engineering and wineberries, by Leslie Wilson
This is my grandfather, James Baker, or Jim as he was known to his wife and his friends. He was a marine engineer who began his working life in dockyards (as a young apprentice at the close of the...
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Ten Favourite Research books by Elizabeth Chadwick.
We moved house 4 years ago to a red brick cottage on the outskirts of the country with a big garden where my husband could tend his allotment from the back instead of having to rent one from the...
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DEATH OF THE SUN KING by Eleanor Updale
300 years ago today Louis XIV to took to his bed for the last time. His legs had been hurting for a while and his doctor thought he had sciatica. In fact it was senile gangrene. Louis' extremities were...
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Provence, My Inspiration by Carol Drinkwater
Provence. Provence-Alpes-Maritimes is my home, and it has also become my work. I never fail to remind myself how fortunate I am. When I first came here to this southern coast of France I was looking...
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Small boats in the English Channel by Janie Hampton
Refugees in small boats are much in the news, with governments determined to stop them coming, send them back, or keep them incarcerated in camps. In the summer of 1940, there were refugees in small...
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Hiroshima: City of Peace, by Clare Mulley
Seventy years ago this month, on Monday 6 August 1945, the nuclear bomb known as ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima by an American B-29 bomber, immediately killing an estimated 80,000 people. Three...
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Ninety-nine years ago by Sheena Wilkinson
Sheena WilkinsonWelcome to our August guest. Since the publication of the award-winning Taking Flight in 2010, Sheena Wilkinson has been established as one of Ireland’s leading writers for young...
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In the Cabinet of Curiosities, with Laurie Graham
copyright: FIDM Museum, Los Angeles Any guesses what this is? If I didn't know better I'd have said it was something used in the construction of bagpipes. Let me help you get to the bottom of this. It...
View ArticleAugust competition
Our competitions are open only to UK FollowersTo win one of five copies of Sheena Wilkinson's Name upon Name, answer the following question in the Comments below:"Which book set in WW1 has the most...
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