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THE ESSEX SERPENT by Sarah Perry. Adèle Geras
This is the wonderful cover of a novel which I read as a plain black and white proof. I was enchanted from the first page, carried away by a rich confection of many different elements. It's a...
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'Medieval Murder -Ten Handy Ways to Poison Your Spouse' by Karen Maitland
Throughout the Middle Ages people were terrified of being poisoned and with good reason. Writing in 1470, Peter of Abano, identified 70 different substances that were deadly poisons, and this did not...
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My Summer of Trees
I am calling this summer My Summer of TreesAs a writer of historical fiction, I want to be specific and precise about the world my characters inhabit. At the moment I am working on a book set in Iron...
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Spells, Pills & Plasters to Help a Lady Get Her Man – Michelle Lovric
BAIT, n. A preparation that renders the hook more palatable. The best kind is beauty. Ambrose Bierce (1842−1914) The Devil's Dictionary, 1911. Binding spells were probably the first bait deployed when...
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Cawdor Castle by Katherine Clements
I’ve recently returned from a writing retreat in Scotland. For most of the trip I was stuck indoors behind a laptop, somewhere in the 17th century. But one glorious Sunday morning I decided to take the...
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The Triumph Tree and other wonders: by Antonia Senior
Delight I'd find in an island breast,on a rock's peak, that there I might often gaze at the sea's calm.That I might see its heavy wavesover the brilliant seaas it sings music to the Fatheron its...
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ARE THE STUARTS THE NEW TUDORS? Elizabeth Fremantle
I've been wondering if we have yet reached peak Tudor.Henry VIII’s stinking, gangrenous leg has been endlessly speculated upon, every layer of Elizabeth I’s petticoats has been lifted and thoroughly...
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Isaac Campion by Janni Howker Catherine Johnson
I was planning to write about something else this month, but you know how it is. I was going through the bookshelves looking for a book I'd thought I'd recognise by it's blue spine (when I found it, it...
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The Wrong Side of History?
by Marie-Louise JensenMy youngest son has taken his history A-level exam today. It's been fascinating being around him as he revises, as his module was British history and politics from 1951 to the...
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Sisi - The People's Princess? By Sue Purkiss
If you spend a few days in Vienna, as we just have, you will soon realise how important a figure the Emperor Franz Joseph was. His name is linked to many of the beautiful, gracious buildings, and the...
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BEATRIX POTTER and the SAILING SQUIRRELS by Penny Dolan.
There are a large number of characters in the manuscript I’m working on and I tend to differentiate them by giving each a certain quality, a shorthand for me while I’m working on the novel and...
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Lois Duncan - Celia Rees
Rather like Catherine Johnson on the 14th, I was going to write about something else this month but then I heard that the American writer, Lois Duncan, had died.Lois Duncan (April 28, 1934 - June 15,...
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History Books by Katherine Webb
We History Girls represent a wide variety of historical writing, for a wide variety of readers. As a writer of historical fiction, I'm constantly striving to bring an era to life, to recreate it...
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Discovering Medieval Oxford - by Ann Swinfen
I fell in love with Oxford when I was nine years old.My mother and I had arrived in England to spend some months with the English half of my family, and my uncle was driving us north to the Midlands. I...
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Casa Museu Medeiros e Almeida by Imogen Robertson
My husband and I have just got back from Portugal. My mother-in-law lives in Porto but before we went to visit her, we spent a week in Lisbon. There is plenty of material for history blogs in that...
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Medieval Masterchef by Catherine Hokin
As I mentioned in my last blog, I am currently spending a considerable amount of time in the fourteenth century. This has allowed me to indulge a number of obsessions, including the entymology of words...
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The Patriot Game; nationalism versus humanity, by Leslie Wilson
German revolutionaries (Wikimedia Commons)Nationalism in its modern form was born in 1848, the Year of Revolutions, and it was a very different animal from what it was to become. It was about...
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THE DEALER AND THE ADDICT by Elizabeth Chadwick
I'm not quite sure how I came to be on their list of users, but however they found me, they ended up targeting me, and I am now a hopeless addict. The moment one of their occasional catalogs drops...
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History of Bedlam by Miranda Miller
While I was writing my Bedlam Trilogy (which will be published as one volume next year by Peter Owen), I became fascinated by the history of the hospital before the nineteenth century, the period I...
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Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, by Carol Drinkwater
Many of my colleagues are writing glorious posts inspired by recent holidays. How envious I feel as I stay locked to my desk, moving inexorably towards my upcoming deadline. However, I did make a short...
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