Blog

  • ‘How It Was’ stories

    I’ve got my proofs for ‘Roman Life on Hadrian’s Wall’ back and am working on a proposal for another book about Romans, so how to write history books is something that is in my head a lot at the moment. One big thing I’m thinking about are the differences between writing for academic readers and… Read more

  • Chalk horses for children

    One of the difficulties in writing for children about prehistory is that, judged by modern expectations, the ancient world was brutal. The problems of this are stark in Rosemary Sutcliffe’s ‘Sun Horse, Moon Horse’, a book that I didn’t read as a small child, although it was first published in 1977. Manderley press has given… Read more

  • Dead right answers in 2026

    I’m sat at my keyboard wondering a lot of things. Whether a proposal I sent to an agent will be accepted, give or take some re-working if she likes it enough to ask me to do that. How long it will take before I can move house, and if it is really just a case… Read more

  • The merry merry month of mead

    It’s the time of year when the weather and roads are foul and if I don’t have to go outside I don’t. Scrunched up under a blanket on the sofa with hot tea and bakery biscuits I was watching the BBC’s Victorian Farm series, taking in the whole turn of the year in one go.… Read more

  • Numbered days

    Been thinking about numbers lately as several friends have reached the half century mark, five sixths of the three score years that denotes old age, or once did. Ten years then left to the expectation of a lifespan. Threescore and ten I can remember well – Old Man, Macbeth. Except that lifespan has increased in… Read more

  • Great-granddad Samuel and the Rudston Venus mosaic

    “It was a woman with a mirror,” said mum when we met up. She confirmed what I already had guessed, that the mosaic that I’d been looking up for research reasons was the same as the mosaic her mum’s dad had had a hand in the finding. The family story goes that my Great Granddad… Read more