In 1800 the world could be a very small place
When my wife was young, she lived in a small village in mid Wales. One day, one of her neighbours decided not to shop in the local market town but to travel away to the big city. When she got there, she found a junction that was controlled by traffic lights. She was...
Summer!
Another week gone and we finally have summer! Dancing outdoors yesterday and again on Sunday. Best enjoy it while it’s here. Cutting back on blogging and social media has meant more time for enjoying summer. I've been dancing indoors and out and was able to skate from...
Those Who Wait: Donald Hounam
Another book review this week. Full disclosure: Donald is a friend I used to go street-skating with. So when he wrote a book about a teenage street-skater who gets involved with a ghost, I sort of had to read it. I’m glad I did because it’s a blast. Fifteen year-old...
Operation Tulip: Deborah Swift
Operation Tulip is the third and final book in Deborah Swift’s World War 2 Secret Agent series. Our heroine, Nancy Callaghan, started the war with the SOE, as a cipher clerk at their offices in Baker Street. She went on, though, to become a field agent, working as a...
Ice Houses
A couple of years ago I wrote a post about ice houses. English Heritage had just restored the ice house at Marble Hill, which is very close to where I live. They claimed that the ice house at Marble Hill was particularly important as ice houses are rare. This made me...
A visit to Cambridge
There was no blog post last week as I was away in Cambridge so I'm sticking with the idea of short posts with pictures and a bit more about daily life. It means that I get fewer views on my blog but people who do read it seem to like it. Most of the colleges are...
Writing (and other) Life
I'm still playing with the idea of shorter blog posts which don't involve researching anything so that I can share historical stuff with you. So this week, here's a bit about how I've been using some of the time I haven't been writing my blog. I've spent an afternoon...
A very short post
Last week's blog post looked at my marketing efforts and said that they weren't achieving as much as I'd hoped and that I would probably be better doing less blogging and tweeting and more actual writing. I asked people to let me know if they disagreed. Nobody did....
Selling my books
I’ve been taking part in #HistFicMay where historical fiction authors are invited to answer one question a day about their work. Yesterday’s question was: ‘How do you advertise your book?’ I’d been thinking about blogging about marketing for a while and this question,...
A scandal at court
Regular readers will know that I spend a lot of time at Marble Hill House where Henrietta Howard lived from 1734 until her death in 1767. Marble Hill became the centre of a circle of some of the leading writers of the day, including Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift and...