Blog

  • House haunting

    Splashing vinegar and sugar and warmed-then-cooled water resentfully into a vase. A recipe for flower preservation to ensnare a buyer for the house. I am moving and already the process is driving me out of my skull insane. The house is a dream – for someone else. It is now someone else’s house that I… Read more

  • Classical Staffordshire

    I had only a few minutes to look round the Royal Pump Room museum at Leamington Spa but I saw these Staffordshire figurines and wanted to find out more about them. The museum label gives a little information about their date and place of production, and that Andromache was bequeathed by Mr F H A… Read more

  • Nerd alert – Roman military households is published!

    This feels like a brag but my book is now in print, and there is little point in writing it a book if nobody is going to read it so I thought I’d post about it. This is an academic book – it does have some stories in it, biographies really, that can be picked… Read more

  • To green knights and men

    Shortened days and storm-blown power cuts call for stories, and the loss of my uncle, my mum’s step-brother, echoing the loss last year of Steve’s dad has put me out of tune for the familiar schmaltz of Christmas Victoriana.  But stories demand nothing but that I read with them; no need to rouse from sugar-slugged… Read more

  • Original words.

    My head is full of thoughts that are not my own. Since I could first understand words and language people have shared thoughts with me – in conversation, on the telly and radio, and most of all through writing. These thoughts are carried by words, as learning to become a researcher emphasises – plagiarism, not… Read more

  • The auriga in my head at conferences.

    Recuperating today after going to a great conference yesterday in Chester, which is objectively one of the UK’s prettiest cities. I grew up not far away in Stafford and my heart always relaxes a little at the sight of black and white timbered buildings; somehow it still feels like home. But conferences. In theory I… Read more