Seedtime & Harvest

I have a wonderful little book, Seedtime & Harvest, the diary of an Essex farmer, William Barnard of Harlowbury. The book is published b...

Read More

A Brief History of Dunking Biscuits

With the new series of the Great British Bake Off in full swing on the BBC there has already been controversy over whether or not it is appr...

Read More

The Four Flowers of Britain

Flowers are important to novelists; a young man will shyly offer a girl a rose; a child will bring a mother a posy on Mother's Day, we u...

Read More

Sneak Preview THE DUKE & THE DEBUTANTE by Melinda Hammond

So, September is here, the summer holidays are over and we are looking forward to autumn, with those longer nights when it is lovely to cu...

Read More

Costume Evidence and the Rice Portrait of Jane Austen

The first part of this post is taken from Ellie Bennett's blog on Jane Austen Portraits. Ellie has done a lot of recent research on the ...

Read More

If you go to Derbyshire...

If you go to Derbyshire and have time to spare, there is so much to see! There are the well-known treasures of course – Chatsworth in all it...

Read More

Duelling Pistols

I’ve been writing a duel in my latest book, so I wanted to brush up on my research. My duel takes place in the mid 1750’s and it’s an affa...

Read More

Benefits of a back list - Miss Peterson and the Colonel

US    UK   Pre-order. Out 25th August. Miss Peterson and the Colonel will be the last book from my back list to be published on Amazon. I wr...

Read More

Inside the Dolls House

When I was a child I had the most enormous dolls house. If it had been scaled up it would have been about 3 times the size of the house I ac...

Read More

Where the Mistress Lived

This post is inspired by Elizabeth Bailey’s fascinating overall view of the Oldest Profession in Georgian Times . I thought it would be in...

Read More