Blog

  • A welcome Odyssey

    There is a beach on Ithaca’s rocky coast, a place where the rock pools the water and if you stand and look the water is clear and green as a wine bottle. There are starfish and the black prickle of urchins, a shrimp is going about its shrimpy business undisturbed until the surging wave breaks… Read more

  • Letter by Paterna-or-whatever-she’s-called, the oldest writing by a woman in Britain

    This Saturday I’m going to the Roman Society’s annual colloquium, an afternoon of free talks that anyone can go to. Even though I’ve worked for the Society for some years doing their social media, I don’t usually go to the colloquium as it always clashes with a family birthday. The topic this year ‘Letters and… Read more

  • A cubiculum of one’s own, or the power of a bad story.

    After months and months of legal wrangling I’ve moved house – goodbye ironstone cottage, hello 1980s brick – and with it I’ve acquired something I covet: a large writing studio all of my own. This is absolutely, completely unnecessary, as today actually proves, because I’m writing this in a café to escape the noise of… Read more

  • ‘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