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In Which I Enjoy a New Word by Joan Lennon
And the word is ...pareidoliaThis may be a term you use on a daily basis, but it was completely new to me. It refers to that peculiar habit of the human brain to see faces, patterns, or meaning where...
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A Very Short History Of How I Became A History Girl -- Sheena Wilkinson
I’m thrilled to be a History Girl, after being for several years a History Girl in waiting.Actually I have been a HG in waiting all my life. I was a swot who loved school, and from the start what I...
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LES PARISIENNES by Anne Sebba. Reviewed by Adèle Geras
Here is a photograph of one of the most delightful bookshops in London. It's the Persephone Bookshop, in Lamb's Conduit Street and it's the home of those beautiful, dove-grey jacketed volumes to which...
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'King Holly, Queen Ivy and Murphy's Law' by Karen Maitland
I love dipping into a book by Philip Gooden called "Skyscrapers, Hemlines and the Eddie Murphy Rule." It is a collection and history of those quirky laws that seem to govern every aspect of our life...
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A New Ancient Roman Restaurant?
by Caroline LawrenceEvery History Girl (and History Boy) longs to travel back to the past, to see what it was really like. And those of us who time travel via fiction are always interested in food....
View ArticleEverybody’s Scrap Book of Curious Facts – Michelle Lovric
A recent gloriously sunny morning at the Columbia Road Flower Market yielded not blooms but a book. Forgive my unctuous and outdated verbosity. My prose style has been contaminated by a little red...
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Historical Drama for Autumn Nights by Katherine Clements
For as long as I can remember I’ve loved watching anything with a period setting. Escaping into the past has always been one of my favourite ways to unwind. Watching history – whether original drama or...
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He treadeth the winepress: Fifth monarchists and the Second Coming.... by...
Imagine a political group infused with Divine righteousness. They brandish a holy book, whose word is literal. They do not recognise the secular state. Politicians are necessarily the Devil’s spawn....
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ODE TO MY THESAURUS – Elizabeth Fremantle
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee for thy depth and breadth and scope,For chemical elements and common allotropes,For thy hundred ways of describing grace.I love thee as the answer...
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Bad Language Catherine Johnson
Jack Shephard and Edgeworth bess escaping from Clerkenwell JailDon't worry! This is a pre watershed blog. All above board. Well mostly. In between everything else I've been lucky enough to read an...
View ArticleLittle Red Riding Hood
by Marie-Louise JensenSometimes, in the course of research, I stumble across a tiny nugget of information that makes a little more sense of the world. This is one such instance. Incidentally, I cannot...
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My Day Out, by Sue Purkiss
A few years ago, I wrote a book about Alfred the Great, called Warrior King. A few days ago, I had the great privilege of reading from it on the Island of Athelney - the secret place in the marshes of...
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"946" or G.I's at THE GLOBE by Penny Dolan
Today’s post is about a play – and a novel - for young people based on a historical event and performed at a historical place. As soon as I saw that the Kneehigh Theatre Company was at The Globe on...
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The Camoufleurs of Leamington Spa - Celia Rees
Interior Coventry Cathedral - John PiperWith the 8th Army on the Sangro - Edward ArdizzoneOfficial War Artists, like John Piper, played a crucial role in recording the impact of the Second World War on...
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A Snapshot From the Writing Life by Katherine Webb
A somewhat more personal blog than normal from me this month as I find myself in that slightly bewildered, exhausted/exhilarated state that comes about when the second (and hopefully final) draft of a...
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The Fall of the Tay Bridge - An Unnecessary Disaster: by Ann Swinfen
On the afternoon of Sunday the 28th December 1879 a passenger train belonging to the North British Railway Company set off from Waverley station in Edinburgh, bound for Granton, on the south bank of...
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When Good King Arthur Ruled this land... by Imogen Robertson
It’s strange the things that bubble up in your mind when you definitely should be doing something else. Today I was clearing the washing up and thought I was thinking about the current work in...
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"Don't Buy a Single Vote More than Necessary": American Elections from Bad to...
2016 has been, to put it mildly, something of a year for politics. In the midst of all the madness, surely the nadir has to be the current US presidential election. Wherever you stand, the campaigning...
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A Chest full of Treasures by Elizabeth LairdMiss Winslow was a well-to-do farmer's daughter in Oxfordshire, and this chest contained the trousseau she took into her marriage in around 1810. Remarkably,...
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William Marshal and the immediate aftermath of The Death of King John By...
Newark Castle todayOn a dark and stormy night of October 18th 1216, King John died at Newark Castle, a couple of months short of his 50th birthday.His reign had been a troubled one for the country and...
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