The past is never dead, it isn’t even past
Starting to write a new novel is both an overwhelming and, contrarily, exciting experience for me as I never know which path the book will take me. In my latest novel, The Orphan’s Secret, Lily Armstrong, enlists in the Women’s Timber Corps – something of which I had...
The love stories of the Tudors have been fodder for historical fiction for centuries. Few do not know the stories of Henry VIII’s wives, Mary I’s marriage to Philip of Spain, and Queen Elizabeth’s array of courtships and succession of favourites. One might be forgiven...
A scandal of such allure that the House of Lords, the judicial system, the British press and London society ignored a turning point in the American War of Independence, possibly the last moment peace might have broken out: this was the trial for bigamy of Elizabeth...
When the Nightingale Sings In 1930s London, by pure chance, Judy Morgan meets Hedwig Kiesler. Judy Morgan has just finished her studies of Physics at Cambridge University. Hedwig Kiesler has just left her beloved home in Austria to escape from her ex-husband. Hedwig...
When the Nightingale Sings is a novel based on the true story of Joan Curran, a Welsh physicist, and Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood movie star whose scientific contributions changed the course of history and World War Two. Joan Curran (represented in the story as the...
What do you do if you’re an uneducated 20-year-old Victorian woman, married to an unimpressive man, with two children but still living with your Mum, the threat of the workhouse ever looming? This was the life of Emily Soldene when she read a glowing review of the...
There are iconic images of the end of the Second World War: the Soviet army reclaiming the Reichstag; jubilant sailors embracing their girls; women paraded semi-naked, heads shaved, a placard of shame around their necks. These were the ‘horizontal collaborators,’ the...
Georgina Weldon, a Victorian media sensation and campaigner against Britain’s archaic lunacy laws, liked to present herself as a restrained individual – someone thrust into the limelight due to circumstances beyond her control. And while such self-depictions were...
Some years ago, I carried out a research project which explored the experiences of students in British universities between the two World Wars. As a social historian I was interested in questions of access, funding and social background. I also wanted to find out more...
Contemporary historians have condemned the gap in literature as justification for pursuing certain narratives in history, justifiably arguing that just because something has not yet been done, that does not mean it should. However, the gap in the previous analyses of...
