Inside Harrogate Library, at the start of March,a new display was put up, decorated with small flags and badges, and arranged by the Local Studies group. As I studied the labels, printed images and photocopied extracts, the story seemed like a glimpse an exciting Edwardian detective adventure. Secret meetings? Foreign infiltrators? Concealed figures hurrying across…
Some years ago the BBC ran an advert for the 6 Nations Rugby tournament which was pulled following some complaints, and then proceeded to go viral! The punchline was – ‘It’s not who you want to win, but who you want to lose.’ No prizes for guessing the answers the Scots, Irish and…
Last Christmas I brought my Mum one of those ancestry DNA kits with the hope that it would reveal hitherto unknown mysteries about her/my lineage and thus provide me with a ready-made topic for a History Girls post.Two months later when the results pinged into her inbox it is fair to say my Mum was…
Anne Boleyn – home-wrecker, whore, wicked stepmother, scheming bitch, witch, the woman responsible for encouraging the early years of the English reformation – or simply a woman whose fate was determined by the love or hate of a King? About the author: Wendy J. Dunn is an Australian writer obsessed by Tudor History. She…
The life of Greta Garbo, the Swedish-American actress, is a rags to riches story. Born in Stockholm in 1905 as Greta Gustafsson, she earned her living as a ‘lather girl’ in a barber shop before becoming a fashion model, and then an accomplished actress who graduated from the Royal Dramatic Training Academy. ‘Discovered’ in Sweden…
I love birds and have lived within chirping distance of Blackfriars Bridge for two decades. Yet I only quite recently realized that it’s a twitcher’s paradise. From the road, you’d never suspect it. You have to lean over the parapet to see the full, strange spectacle. Each column, east and west, is adorned with life-size…
I first read The Whalebone Theatre a couple of years ago. Lots of people had enjoyed it, and I did too, but it probably suffered a bit from something akin to ‘tall poppy syndrome’: do you know what I mean? It’s when you hear so many good things about a book/film/place that when you…
This is the cover of my ninth novel, When I Was, which has just been published by Barbican Press. I wrote this novel about growing up in London in the 1950s from memory. Strangely, I found myself unable to write about myself in the first person, although I’ve written about other people – the artists Richard…
I am a week away from publication of my latest novel, ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE. 3rd July 2025. It is always an exciting as well as a nerve-racking time. A broad synopsis of what the novel is about: a British couple, Celia and Dominic, are living on a vineyard in the south of France….
St Andrews in Scotland is known worldwide as the home of golf as well as for its famous university where Prince William met Catherine – but it’s also a town with a lot of history. My first historical novel, The Castilians, closely follows the long and dramatic siege of St Andrews Castle in 1546-7. Since…
