When Charlotte Brontë met William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was one of Charlotte Brontë’s literary heroes. In 1848 she dedicated the second edition of Jane Eyre to him, after much admiring […]
Revolutionary Relics: The Bastille Re-cast Anew
On 14 July 1789, in what would become a defining moment of the French Revolution, Parisians stormed the Bastille prison – a symbol of the […]
The Entire Real McCoy Blog Tour
Between 1 November and 10 November 2018 I undertook a blog tour for The Real McCoy sharing a fresh extract from the book on every […]
10 Bestselling Books Written in Less Than 2 Months
Writing often seems like a tortuous process, we tend to picture novelists hopped up on coffee, hunched over their laptops staring into space while their […]
Traditional Signs of Guilt
In the time before DNA testing, dusting for fingerprints and blood-spatter analysis proving guilt or innocence was a rather less scientific matter. Folklore, superstition and […]
A Collection of Literary Orphans of Note
Literature is littered with orphans. The classic plot trope of the poor parentless child has appeared in numerous books across the eras, untethering our fictional […]
The Tragic Lives of 5 Artists’ Muses
The Muses in classical mythology were the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddess of memory. Their very being inspired the creativity of artists, writers, […]
The Real McCoy Blog Tour!
To celebrate the publication of my latest book The Real McCoy and 149 Other Eponyms I am embarking on a blog tour! From November 1 […]
Real streets named after literary characters
The built-environment often reflects the especial history of an area, with local luminaries, ancient landmarks and builder’s names often revealed in the street names. More […]
The Strange Afterlives of Ancient Egyptian Mummies
The mummified remains of Ancient Egyptians have always held a certain gruesome fascination but today the closest we are likely to get to one is […]