A few of my favourite things. When you are writing historical fiction it is always the unknown unknowns that will bite you - those things that it has not occurred to you that you need to check. A couple of weeks ago I had a moment or several of historical fiction writer's sheer panic when … Continue reading Unknown Unknowns and Elizabethan Earrings
Month: June 2019
Book Review – Murder at Westminster Abbey by Amanda Carmack
Londoners are crowding into the streets, celebrating, watching the river procession as Elizabeth Tudor makes her way by barge to the Tower of London in preparation for her coronation. Meanwhile, in the backstreets of Southwark, a kindhearted prostitute with pale skin and red hair is brutally murdered. Nineteen-year-old Kate Haywood is the daughter of a … Continue reading Book Review – Murder at Westminster Abbey by Amanda Carmack
Courtship Tokens
Embroidered gloves, leather, 16th century Gift giving has always been an element of courtship, in the Tudor period as much as at any other time, with gifts often marking the progress of a relationship from early courtship, through pre-betrothal to the formal rituals of betrothal and on to marriage. These gifts were given as tokens … Continue reading Courtship Tokens
My Reading – May 2019
Song of the Sea Maid by Rebecca Mascull I think I had a brother once. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles At half past six on the twenty-first of June 1922, when Count Alexander Illyich Rostov was escorted through the gates of the Kremlin onto Red Square, it was glorious and cool. Painting in … Continue reading My Reading – May 2019