Had planned today as a day off, to complete work on chapter 7, but the fates conspired against me and I was called back into work for an urgent meeting which I couldn’t avoid. Then, when that was shifted to 90 minutes later, even the chance of having an afternoon free began to recede. In […]
Writing and Researching
Mices Crisis
1834 was also a bad year for German mice. One of the newspapers I was reading reported alongside the fire that: A remarkable phenomenon has been observed in the neighbourhood of Frankfort. It is a sudden malady among the mice, thousands of which are found dead or dying in the fields.
Firemen to the Rescue
Yesterday (Friday) I had a quick chat with some of the fire safety guys at the Houses of Parliament. They are all ex-firemen so they really know their stuff. I wanted to make sure I understood the technical details of the descriptions of the fire from contemporary newspapers and other sources I have been working […]
Telling Stories
Just back from a fascinating four days attending Bob McKee’s Story Seminar. Although intended to be useful for work, in terms of interpreting historical stories for the public, it was also tremendously helpful for my book. McKee is a famous (perhaps, the most famous) Hollywood script doctor, and a polemicist for ‘story’ in all narrative, particularly […]
What did the fire look like?
I was really interested to see this BBC video of the fire at Hastings pier, East Sussex, which burnt down last night. I think it gives an insight into what the 1834 fire may have looked like from the south bank of the Thames: reflections in the water, sparks falling off the sides, and afterwards a […]
Little Miss Grumpy
Have managed to do an hour or two here and there over the last few weeks but work and other commitments at home mean that I’ve not done as much as I’d like. Grumpy.
