Blog
Cabinet of Curio-stories – Birth and Death, A Renaissance Gimmel Ring
This 'gimmel' ring was made in Germany in 1631. This type of ring has multiple circlets that fit like puzzle pieces. The word 'gimmel' comes from the Latin word gemelli, meaning twins, and often signified two connected eternity rings denoting a couple's permanent...
Historical Fiction – 7 Virtues. No 3 – The Past Does Not Exist
This might seem like a rather existentialist title, especially as in one sense we a brought to look at the past every time we read a newspaper or trawl online for yesterday's sports scores. But in this article on a new theory of time, Jonathan O Callaghan says that...
Historical Fiction : Recommended reads set in the Spanish Civil War & Colonial India
Andalusia 1938 During the Spanish Civil War, Professor Pinzon and his young grandson are taken hostage by Republican soldiers and imprisoned in an old church. The church is built upon an even more ancient Moorish site, and so begins a dual narrative, set in medieval...
Lady Anne Clifford – travelling 17thC style, with 40 carts
You can't live in the Westmorland area and not know anything about Lady Anne Clifford. In the 17th century she travelled around her vast Northern estates accompanied by more than forty carts which contained everything she needed to make herself comfortable at her...
Cabinet of Curio-stories – An Elizabethan Hair Pin
Silver bodkins for your hair, bobs that maidens love to wear The Pedlar's Song, from 'The Triumphant Widow' 1677 I love looking at what people have found under our feet by metal detecting or digging in their garden. The past is buried so close to the surface! Here's...
Historical Fiction – Virtue no 2 The Non-Fiction Novel
The 'non-fiction novel' was a phrase originally used by Truman Capote in 1966 to describe his book 'In Cold Blood - A True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences.' Since then, true crimes have been fictionalised with much success, books such as 'The...
Historical Fiction – learning from ‘The Nightingale’ and ‘The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez’
Vianne and Isabelle are sisters whose challenge is to survive after the fall of France to the Nazis in WWII. Vianne's house is requisitioned by the Gestapo, whilst her husband is away fighting, leading to knife-edge tensions as she tries to protect her daughter...
Cabinet of Curio-stories – Shoes from the Mary Rose
The Mary Rose, warship of King Henry VIII, lay undiscovered beneath the waves for almost 300 years until one day, a fisherman’s line got tangled in the wreckage and her whereabouts became known. That was in 1836, but the salvage wasn't attempted until the 1980's...
Historical Fiction – Seven Virtues – No 1 Bravery
Having thought about what might constitute the Seven Deadly Sins in Historical Fiction, I'm now getting a little balance by paying attention to the Seven Virtues. And one of them for certain is bravery, and by this, I mean courage with the language. It is a chance for...
Research Find of the Week – ‘Tudor Wimbledon’
I bought this from a charity shop in Kendal for £1.29. As Wimbledon was a village so close to London (then 10 miles distant), it does include a few anecdotes about famous London personages, such as Catherine Parr, and Henry VIII. The King visited Wimbledon in his...
From Queen to Queen, the fate of A Tudor Rectory
The Old Rectory, Wimbledon's s oldest surviving residence, was originally known as the Parsonage House. Once a moated Manor, it was built in the early 16th century, close to St Mary's Church. In 1536, after the dissolution of the monasteries, Parsonage House was...
17th Century Research Find of the Week
My local bookshop has 100,000 second hand books. It's a five minute drive, or a brisk half hour walk along country lanes. I always think I must have exhausted their supply of Tudor and Stuart gems, but they keep getting more stock, and this week I was lucky. Here is...
Historical Fiction – deadly sin no 7 – mistaking it for a genre
Like most readers of historical fiction, I have my favourite eras. I love the seventeenth century, the Tudors and the medieval period, with the occasional foray into Victoriana, WWII and Greek myth. So I am unlikely to purchase anything set in the Napoleonic era,...
Cabinet of Curio-stories – An Apostle Spoon
I wonder what this spoon, which has survived for three hundred years, has stirred, or served, since it was first made? It is a 17thC Apostle spoon with an engraving of `Ave Maria` on the bowl. There are also further marks and chasings made during the Edwardian era, so...
Historical Fiction – deadly sin no 6 – the Aura of an Era
One of the things that attracts writers of historical fiction, is the lure of the past - its costumes, its pageantry, its beautiful buildings and architecture, many imbued with a craftsmanship mostly lost to us today. Often great love and attention is devoted to...