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Every Picture Tells a Story
Every picture tells a story is an old cliché but it is true. When it comes to illustrating non-fiction, well-used and thoughtfully captioned images can enhance understanding of a story. However all too...
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Place and the Novel by Antonia Senior + February Competition
Our February guest is Antonia Senior - welcome! It's not often that February has 29 days and hence a guest slot on The History Girls. There's a competition too, so please scroll down when you have read...
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The Lost Library of John Dee by Mary Hoffman
I must declare an interest. I based a character in my Stravaganza series on John Dee. William Dethridge is an Elizabethan alchemist, mathematician and calendarist, who started the whole business of...
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On Truth in Historical Fiction by Gillian Polack
Writers have many reasons why we write historical fiction. Today I want to explore just one aspect of just one reason.Some writers write historical fiction because they have a profound need to tell...
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What is history? by Vanora Bennett
“What is history?” was the kind of big question I remember being asked to answer in long, shakily self-important essays at school.Back then the abstraction felt a bit of a waste of time. The question...
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The Woman in the Kitchen - Katherine Langrish
This is going to be a short post but a heartfelt one. It's Mothering Sunday this weekend, and here is a drawing I made for my junior school teacher a very long time ago. We'd been asked to draw a...
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"The Family of Man" - Exhibition and Book - Joan Lennon
I went to the exhibition The Family of Man in the early 1960s, when it was on its travels around the world (37 countries on 6 continents, over 8 years), and it had a deep effect on me. My dad bought...
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'Judith Kerr at 92' by Lydia Syson ('We haven't always been old ladies...)
Every so often I go into a small grump about the way authors these days are forced into the role of performers. Instead of being left to write or draw in peace, they have to climb onto stages and make...
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Me and Moby Dick.....by Adèle Geras
When Gregory Peck appeared as Captain Ahab in the movie of Moby Dick, the brilliant film critic Pauline Kael was of the opinion that he would have been better cast as the whale. I remember very little...
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'Help, there's a fly in my Chalice' by Karen Maitland
For centuries educators have wrestled with the problem of how to encourage someone who has little interest in studying to sit down and read a book, much less learn its contents. Back in the 14th...
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Ancient Roman Doorporn
by Caroline LawrenceCaptain Stephen (right)As I write a new series of historical novels for kids set in Roman Britain, I am lucky enough to have three expert readers. The first one is a published...
View ArticleW.G. Sebald's pockets - Michelle Lovric
I was fortunate enough to see W.G. Sebald in conversation at the Royal Festival Hall not long before he died. I’d recently read Austerlitz and was obsessed with it.I remember thinking how profoundly...
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Interview with Suzannah Dunn by Katherine Clements
I first met Suzannah Dunn in 2008 when she was my tutor on an Arvon course. That week was an important turning point for me – Suzannah, an insightful and inspiring teacher, encouraged me to begin...
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Making It Up As I Go Along.... by Tanya Landman
When I was first asked to do Creative Writing sessions in schools I was terrified. Being a writer didn’t automatically mean I could teach other people to do it! I dreaded being ‘found out’: that...
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MUSING ON MUSES – Elizabeth Fremantle
My latest novel Watch the Lady is about a celebrated Elizabethan muse. Lady Rich was the inspiration behind Sir Philip Sidney's groundbreaking sonnet cycle Astrophel and Stella, a heartrending account...
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The Man Who Named Clouds Catherine Johnson
This plaque is on a house in Tottenham, North London. Tottenham does not have a good rep. It's all football and riots. But Tottenham was once a country vilage on the edge of town, and Bruce Grove,...
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Holocaust literature for younger children, by Y S Lee
"Who was Hitler?" asked my seven-year-old, a couple of weeks ago. It was 7.30 on a weekend morning.It turns out he'd been inspecting the books on my desk. I ought to have seen this coming: I've amassed...
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Never on a Sunday - Sue Purkiss
A week or two ago, the Sunday trading laws were in the news. There was an attempt to extend the hours for which shops can stay open on a Sunday, and on the radio people discussed seriously whether it...
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TINDERBOXES by Susan Price
This is an adaptation of a talk I gave at the Birmingham Midlands Institute,in April 2015,The Royal Literary Fundfor the Royal Literary Fund's programme of talks open to the public. I was one of three...
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Through the Shop Window - Celia Rees
The exhibition could be about any town, large or small, in any part of the country, but it is my town, the town where I live, Royal Leamington Spa. It offers a fascinating glimpse into a lost, almost...
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