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WHEN CLARET WAS PINK: Wine production in the Middle Ages.
British LibraryOn Raisin wine:"One who takes this is especially exhilarated and restored by a raisin wine which is clear to the bottom of the cup, in its clarity similar to the tears of a penitent, and...
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Richard Dadd by Miranda Miller
The artist Richard Dadd appears as a minor character in my sixth novel, Nina in Utopia.When I finished writing it he was still very much alive for me, so I decided to give him a novel of his own,...
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Pesticides, the history of ... by Carol Drinkwater
Last night, while I was watering the land, I watched a small flock of ring-necked turtle doves gorging themselves on fruits in the fig tree, which have ripened very early this year. There were other...
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: IN SEARCH OF ST WINEFRIDE by Ann Turnbull
Research for a new novel has taken me on the trail of a Welsh saint.St Winefride's Well is at Holywell, near Flint in north Wales, and was a famous place of pilgrimage both before and after the...
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Children and War by Julie Summers
A Jewish child in Bergen Belsen April 1945Children: War. Two words that perhaps do not sit together comfortably in one’s mind. What have children to do with war? What has war to do with children?...
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Three Extraordinary Women by Amy Licence
Our August guest is Amy Licence:Amy Licence is an historian of women’s lives, from queens to commoners. Her particular interests lie in Modernism, specifically Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group, Picasso...
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The 'Poo Table': August's Cabinet of Curiosities by Charlotte Wightwick
I hope you all had a great Bank Holiday Weekend. Mine was brilliant: I stayed with friends in Weymouth. The sun (unusually, for Bank Holiday) shone and we had a great time at the beach and barbequing....
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August competition
To win a copy of Amy Licence's Bohemian Lives, just answer this question in the comments section below, then email your answer to maryhoffman@maryhoffman.co.uk so that we can notify you if you win:"Who...
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The House of Beaufort by Mary Hoffman
I can't remember when I first became interested in the Beauforts, the children conceived by Katherine Swynford by her lover, John of Gaunt, and later legitimised by their marriage.Unlike many History...
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Victoria's voice, the fiction of Caro and other thoughts, by Gillian Polack
Right now I’m revelling in different readings of historical periods. Normally I do this with my historian’s hat on and the different views are the different interpretation s of vast amounts of data and...
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The Vanishing Children of Paris, by Anna Mazzola
May, 1750. Children have been disappearing from the streets of Paris. A lawyer named Barbier writes in his diary: 'For a week now people have been saying that police constables in disguise are roaming...
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Comfort Me With Apples - Katherine Langrish
It’s September, and our apple tree has been so laden with fruit this year that branches have actually cracked and broken off under the weight, as though taking Keats’ lines from Ode to Autumn – To bend...
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Science Fiction from 1752 - Joan Lennon
"In one of the planets that revolve around the star known by the name of Sirius, was a certain young gentleman of promising parts, whom I had the honour to be acquainted with, in this his last voyage...
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Granda's Google by Sheena Wilkinson
Another in my occasional series about books from the past.The New Illustrated Universal Reference Book is neither new nor of much practical use as a reference book in 2017. It takes up too much space...
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THE RASPUTIN DAGGER by Theresa Breslin. Reviewed by Adèle Geras.
Theresa Breslin needs no introduction to the readers of this blog. She was one of the Founding History Girls and is well known as the winner of a Carnegie Medal and a writer of great distinction. She...
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'Wyspes, Kexis and Cokenay in Medieval Tottenham' by Karen Maitland
I've recently been re-reading the medieval satirical poem The Turnament of Totenham, (Tournament of Tottenham). It was written by an unknown author sometime before 1456 and is set in Tottenham which...
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Bad Dogs by Caroline Lawrence
In nearly twenty years of trying to be a writer, I notice that authors tend to return to the same themes again and again. It’s as if certain incidents or impressions from childhood have branded our...
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Beaver Country - Michelle Lovric
In the late springtime of this year, nine poets went into a primaeval forest. Each one came out of that experience just a little different from the way they were before.I was one of them.I’m fortunate...
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The writer, the spies and leaf-mould memories
I first visited the museum at Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, UK in 2014, and went again last month. It is a fascinating museum, in many ways representing the triumph of...
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On swimming in Ancient Roman fishponds, by Antonia Senior
This Summer, we snorkelled in an Ancient Roman Fishpond.The setting was the incredible island of Ventotene, some 50 kilometres off the coast of Lazio. Just 800 metres wide and 3 kilometres long,...
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