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A HIDDEN ROMAN VILLA by Ann Turnbull
At Sudeley Castle in the Cotswolds there is a small collection of Roman artefacts, among them a statue of a local deity, Apollo Cunomaglos - the Hound Lord. Most of the items are from the site of a 2nd...
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Living in Time - Gillian Polack
I was going to write a delightful post about my favourite works of literature (a few of the many) but fate intervened. I confused my calendars and I am two weeks closer to my holiday period than I...
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A Tyranny of Petticoats, by Y S Lee
Hello, readers. I am tremendously excited to share with you the absolutely glorious cover of Jessica Spotswood's historical anthology, A Tyranny of Petticoats (Candlewick Press, March 2016). Behold!My...
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Snorri the Seal fights the Nazis - by Katherine Langrish
When I was about six years old, my grandparents gave me a book called 'Snorri the Seal'. It was the story of of a vain little seal pup who ignores the advice of his elders and betters about keeping out...
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Victorian Photographs and Women Reading by Joan Lennon
This is a post in two parts.Part the first: There is a wonderful exhibition on at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, running till the 22nd November, titled Photography: A Victorian...
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Ancient History in Sardinia by Lydia Syson
I first fell for Sardinia eight or nine years ago, on a summer house swap. Even the milk cartons charmed me. They used to show a cow standing in front of a crumbling nuraghe – a circular, dry-stone...
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SISTERS by Adèle Geras
Note: When I wrote this post, I hadn't read Christina Konig's excellent post about LIFE IN SQUARES. I do hope readers of this blog will excuse a slight overdose of the Bloomsbury Group. My post is...
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'Don't Hang the Messenger' by Karen Maitland
'I don't care what your delivery sheet says, I'm not signing for the white elephant!'Having waited all day for a ‘guaranteed’ delivery of a package which has not arrived, I find myself wondering if...
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Visualising Roman London by Caroline Lawrence
The historical novels I love to read (and hopefully write) transport me to the past. They make me hear it, feel it, smell it, taste it. Most of all, they make me SEE the past. As a visual thinker that...
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James Bond meets Goldoni, and more musings on the Byron question - Michelle...
Gregory Dowling’s new historical novel, Ascension, is set in Venice in the 1749. By coincidence, my current WIP is set in La Serenissima in 1740, so I devoured his book with particular voracity. It’s...
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Last Orders, by Laurie Graham
Jack the Ripper guided walks are a hugely successful tourist attraction in the East End of London but as I discovered when I was researching The Night in Question, 117 years on very little remains of...
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Cat Woman by Tanya landman
I suppose my fascination with Siamese cats started with Blue Peter’s Jason. I remember walking all the way to the Civic Centre in Gravesend, Kent with my brother when I was about six years old because...
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DOG TALES – Elizabeth Fremantle
It is no secret that I'm a dog lover and a recent research trip to look at Dutch art offered up a multitude of painted canines which brought to mind the dogs in my novels. My work is teeming with the...
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Pretty Woman 1795 Catherine Johnson
I was initially going to title this blog Sex In the City. I have been researching loads for an adult (not that sort of adult thank you very much) project I'm working on. It's set among the low and high...
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Werewolves
by Marie-Louise JensenI had a new book out in late July. Which was weird because I didn't see it until mid August because I was in Europe when it appeared.I arrived at a friend's house in Germany and...
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Things to do in Brussels - by Sue Purkiss
You quite often see a little bit of Brussels on TV, don't you? It's generally a bit of one of the European Commission or Parliament buildings, used as a backdrop for a reporter relating the latest bit...
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"A ROYAL WELCOME" at Buckingham Palace. By Penny Dolan
Once I heard a writer talk about finding the right word for the “thing you’d drink from” for an exact historical setting. “Goblet” seemed too grand, “beaker” sounded too ancient and “glass” did not fit...
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Orderly and Humane - Celia Rees
Like most of us this summer, I've been shocked and moved by the images of refugees in flight from the turmoil of the Middle East, fleeing conflict by any means they can, making the long and perilous...
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'Strange how potent cheap music is...' Listening to the sounds of the past -...
When you’re trying to recreate the past, there’s nothing quite so evocative as listening to the popular music of an era, which is what I’ve been doing for the past few months of researching and writing...
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Joshua Hodgetts - Master Glass Engraver by Ann Swinfen
It all started with a small piece of glass. When I was nine years old my two great-aunts, retired schoolteachers, gave me a little oval of reddish-brown glass, about two inches high by an inch and a...
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