I don’t often blog about matters unrelated to writing and historical fiction, but occasionally I just feel the need to write about something different, and that “different” is always to do with the natural world, specifically the birds and the plants I observe on my travels, whether locally or further afield. Of course there hasn’t …
Pandemic then and now…
I wrote much of this piece a couple of weeks ago for a smaller audience, but I thought I’d like to share it more widely, as our present global “pandemic” happens to have come at the very moment when I’m again writing about pandemic, so it’s uppermost in my writer’s mind right now… I’d hate …
Remote, romantic, magnificent…
This post was first published on The History Girls blogspot in November 2019. In September, our family revisited a favourite holiday destination. We hadn’t been there for several years and were eager to return. It being autumn, the weather was mostly chilly, and rainy, but it didn’t dampen our enthusiasm. Indeed, that sort of …
Medieval gardens
(Post first published on The History Girls blogspot.) Last month, my post looked at various aspects of food and eating in the 14th century, the period of my current fiction series, using a few descriptions from my novels as a shortcut to the evidence I have gleaned over my relatively brief time as an historical novelist. …
Medieval food, feast and famine
In my novels of 14th century England, I try to include a good deal of description of medieval daily life. Clothing, housing, furniture and furnishings, artefacts and tools, working practices, medical practices and, of course, food, can all help to place characters in context, differentiate the life styles of people of diverse stations, and bring …
