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Denounced by Leslie Wilson
This is a photocopy of a letter written eighty years ago this week, denouncing my grandfather, Lieutenant Bernhard Rösel, of the Zabrze-Hindenburg police force in Upper Silesia, to the new Nazi...
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Horsing Around: Functions and colours of the Medieval horse in the 12th and...
Horse shoe circa 1300 Museum of LondonI was one of those horse-mad little girls. I spent a lot of my childhood either making up stories in my imagination about horses and ponies, or galloping about...
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FAKING IT by Eleanor Updale
STERN'S SCOOP Thirty years ago yesterday, the Sunday Times published what it thought was a magnificent scoop: they had bought from the German magazine Stern the rights to serialise Hitler's...
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THE LURE OF THE MINIATURE – curl and pearl and innocent eyes – Dianne Hofmeyr
An Unknown Woman in Masque Costume Isaac Oliver England, 1609 © Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonHow was a girl to get her face out there and find a suitor and kindle the flame of passion without...
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La Belle Sultane by Louisa Young
La Belle Sultane: Aimée Dubucq de RiveryThe Rose:Gallica, Aka: ViolaceaOrigin: France, early 1800sSize of flower: 6cmScent: Light Flowerings: Once onlyHeight: 1.75mSpread: 1.5mLa Belle Sultane is a...
View ArticleThe Edit, or How the Delete Button Takes Over Your Life, by K. M. Grant
So, here I am, sitting with my novel after a first meeting with my new editor. There are revisions to make and things to think about. I am delighted to do both. I've been exceptionally fortunate in...
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GUEST - Ian Mortimer interviewed by Katherine Roberts
Ian Mortimer (aka James Forrester)Today's guest is Dr Ian Mortimer, historian and (as of this month) TV presenter. As James Forrester he is the author of a trilogy of historical novels set in the...
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A Day Out In History by Susan Price
The Black Country Museum from the Chapel steps I visited the Black Country Museum the other day. It’s an open air museum, dedicated to the industrial history of the Black Country, with many...
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A little bit of family history by Mary Hoffman
This is my mother-in-law, Roshan Mirza as she was then, in her twenties. She was born a Parsi in Bangalore, where her father Nosherwan Mirza was a High Court Judge. He was murdered by someone he had...
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Hannah Glasse and The Art of Cookery - Lucy Inglis
This week I participated in a short film for the Great British Bake Off on Hannah Glasse, one of the eighteenth century's most influential cookery writers. Hannah was the Mrs Beaton of her time,...
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Are you receiving me, over? A Sound History - Eve Edwards
I have been listening to the recent BBC Radio 4 programme, Noise: A Human History by David Hendy (you can catch some of it on iPlayer if you missed it). Fascinating. He has attempted to chart sound...
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Hero and Leander retold, Elizabethan style - Katherine Langrish
Hero and Leander by Domenico Fetti, oil on panel, 1622/3 Thomas Nashe is my very favourite minor Elizabethan writer-cum-dramatist-cum-pamphleteer-cum-entertainer-cum-poet, best known today for his...
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1000 Miles Up the Nile - Joan Lennon
A Thousand Miles up the Nile by Amelia B. Edwardsfirst published 1876Okay, this is the plan. Don't get distracted. Just nip in, grab a little local colour, and get out fast. You know how the...
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Ten things you can’t do with a Kindle – Katherine Roberts
My interview with history boy Ian Mortimer last month suggests that the physical book is still the preferred format for historians, despite the rise of ebooks in other genres. But even if reading them...
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NOT AN EVER-ROLLING STREAM AT ALL by Adèle Geras
This is the corner of Benet Street and Trumpington Street in Cambridge. This picture shows the scale of the clock set into the wall there. It was named The Chronophage by its inventor, John C. Taylor,...
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Sword and Scalpel by Karen Maitland
A woman fighting alongside menIn the past century we’ve seen women take up many professional roles formerly barred to them and you often hear it said that women are doing these jobs for the first time...
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The Sewers of Herculaneum
The British Museum in Londonby Caroline LawrenceLast Saturday, 4 May 2013, I attended a free talk at the British Museum on the Sewers of Herculaneum. This was one of many fascinating lectures and other...
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Lambs to the Slaughter – Michelle Lovric
My favourite piece of physical research for my new novel, The Fate in the Box, took place here, at the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice. Locals refer to it simply as the ‘Frari’.This...
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The Ghost of a Palace, by Laurie Graham
The Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace is on every tourist’s list but personally I’ve always preferred the daily ceremony at Horse Guards, perhaps because of its unpredictable ingredient of...
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DRESSING THE CHILDREN by H.M. Castor
Portrait of Lord Arundel or Portrait of a Child with a Rattle, 1611- attributed to Paul van Somer (1576/1578–1622) [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsBack in August 2011, I wrote a post on this site...
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