After months of lying dormant, this blog is about to spring back into life. That’s because I’ve just completed my second book, a sequel to The Day Parliament Burned Down. It’s taken about two years to complete: six months of research, about 15 months of writing (roughly one chapter per month with time off at Christmas 2014) […]
Writing and Researching
A (Re)Treat for Me
I had been longing to go to Retreats for You for at least a year, ever since I heard about it via Clare Mackintosh and Emma Darwin‘s blogs. For the last nine months I’ve been collecting together research materials and reading around various topics for Book No 2. Writing the latest will be a very […]
One Year On…And the Search Continues
Today is the first anniversary of publication of the book. A lot’s happened. Many lovely people have got in touch to say how much they enjoyed it. New accounts and relics of the fire have come to light. The reviewers liked it. It was book of the week/year in some papers. And – ahem – it was nominated […]
My Hot Date with Mr Turner
I’m currently on a lecture tour for the Royal Oak Foundation (Americans in Alliance with the National Trust), and a few days ago I had the opportunity to visit one of the great Turner oils of the 1834 fire – which now hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. During the writing of The Day […]
On Watling Street
Just before Christmas I found myself attending a week-long course in the City of London and, as chance would have it, the training centre was on the corner of Queen Street and Watling Street EC4. Watling Street was the Roman road which ran from Dover to Wroxeter and beyond. This London fragment of it still bears its ancient name, […]
Relics of the Old Palace of Westminster
One of my hopes on publishing The Day Parliament Burned Down was that new information which I had been unable to track down in my research would come to light when readers and audiences got to hear about the fire. The most obvious one was to find out what ultimately happened to Chance the dog, but I also […]
